In this paper we study the effect of NAFTA on the responsiveness of Mexican economy to real exchange rate shocks. We argue that, by opening the U.S. and Canadian markets to Mexican goods, NAFTA made it easier for domestic producers to take advantage of the opportunities brought by the...

This study explores whether the experience rating of employers' disability insurance premiums affects the inflow of older employees to disability benefits in Finland. To identify the causal effect of experience rating, we exploit a pension reform that extended the coverage of the...

We document the recent phenomenon of uphill flows of capital from nonindustrial to industrial countries and analyze whether this pattern of capital flows has hurt growth in nonindustrial economies that export capital. Surprisingly, we find that there is a positive correlation between current...

It is almost certain that the world economy is entering a recession of historic proportions; how bad things get will depend on how governments manage the Covid-19 pandemic. At the core of the problem lies a very difficult choice: whether to "flatten the curve" of the epidemic or whether to...

This paper studies the pro-poor bias of contemporary trade policy in India by estimating the household welfare effects of eliminating the current protection structure. The elimination of a pro-poor trade policy is expected to have lower welfare gains or higher welfare loss at the low end of the...

We discuss the effects of offshoring on the labor market in a matching model with endogenous adjustment of educational skills. We carry out a comparative statics analysis and show that offshoring leads to a restructuring of the economy through skill-biased technical change (SBTC) where overall...

Seguro Popular (SP) was introduced in 2002 to provide health insurance to the 50 million Mexicans without Social Security. This paper tests whether the program has had unintended consequences, distorting workers' incentives to operate in the informal sector. The analysis examines the impact of...