The risk of default that business firms face is very significant and differs widely across countries. This paper explores the links between countries' business conditions and international trade embedment and the default risk at the country level from a theoretical point of view. Our main...

We develop a general equilibrium model of international trade with heterogeneous firms, where countries can invest into basic research to improve their technological potential. These research investments tighten firm selection and raise the average productivity of firms in the market, thereby...

Does corruption grease or sand the wheels of economic growth? This paper uses meta-analysis techniques to systematically evaluate the evidence addressing this question. It uses a data set comprising 460 estimates of the effect of corruption on growth from 41 empirical studies. The main factors...

We examine the interaction between foreign aid and binding borrowing constraint for a recipient country. We also analyze how these two instruments affect economic growth via non-linear relationships. First of all, we develop a two-country, two-period trade-theoretic model to develop testable...

This paper evaluates the welfare impact of observed levels of migration and remittances in both origins and destinations, using a quantitative multi-sector model of the global economy calibrated to aggregate and firm-level data on 60 developed and developing countries. Our framework accounts...

We explore three hitherto poorly understood characteristics of the human trafficking market – the cross-border ease of mobility of traffickers, the relative bargaining strength of traffickers and final buyers, and the elasticity of buyers' demand. In a model of two-way bargaining, the exact...

This paper combines different strands of the productivity literature to investigate the effect of idiosyncratic (firm-level) policy distortions on aggregate outcomes. On the one hand, a growing body of empirical research has been relating cross-country differences in key economic outcomes, such...

We present an OLG model in which life expectancy and environmental quality dynamics are jointly determined. Agents may invest in environmental care, depending on how much they expect to live. In turn, environmental conditions affect life expectancy. As a result, our model produces a positive...