We develop a model of international trade between two symmetric countries that features inter-group inequality between managers and workers, and also intra-group inequality within each of those two groups. Individuals are heterogeneous with respect to their managerial ability, and firms run by...

This paper studies how a country's labor market institutions, by affecting workers' skill acquisition, can shape its export patterns. I develop an open-economy model in which workers undertake non-contractible activities to acquire firm-specific skills on the job. In the model, labor market...

This paper investigates a theoretical mechanism linking comparative advantage to the distribution of skills in the working population. We develop a tractable multi-country, multi-industry model of trade with unobservable skills in the labour market and show that comparative advantage derives...

Knowledge is key to the competitiveness and success of an organization and in particular of a firm. Firms and their managers acquire knowledge via a variety of different channels which are often difficult to track down and quantify. By matching employer–employee data with trade data at the...

A common critique of globalization is that it leads to a race to the bottom. Specifically, it is assumed that multinationals invest in countries with lower regulatory standards and that countries competitively undercut each other's standards in order to attract foreign capital. This paper tests...

We introduce a simple but flexible analytical framework in which both trade in goods and trade in tasks arise. We use this framework to provide versions of the gains-from-trade and the famous four HO theorems (Heckscher–Ohlin, factor-price-equalisation, Stolper–Samuelson, and Rybczynski)...

This paper examines the presence of a pro-poor bias in the existing structure of protection of six Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Gambia, and Madagascar. We build on a simple agricultural household production model and we propose an...

Macro cross-country data and micro US county data indicate that resource-rich regions have small but relatively productive manufacturing sectors and large but relatively unproductive non-manufacturing sectors. We suggest a process of specialization to explain these facts. Windfall revenue...

This paper studies how labor market frictions affect the consequences of trade integration in a two-country dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with heterogeneous firms and endogenous producer entry. Two main results emerge. First, trade integration is beneficial for welfare by inducing...

We use Belgian manufacturing firm-level data over the period 1996–2007 to analyze the impact of imports from different origins on firm employment growth, exit, and skill upgrading. For this purpose, we use both industry-level and firm-level imports by country of origin and further distinguish...