Since changes in trade openness are typically confounded with other factors, it has been difficult to identify the labor market consequences of increased international trade. The advent of the United States Interstate Highway System provides a unique policy experiment, which I use to identify...

Since changes in trade openness are typically confounded with other factors, it has been difficult to identify the labor market consequences of increased international trade. The advent of the United States Interstate Highway System provides a unique policy experiment, which I use to identify...

This paper studies the impact of NAFTA on informality and real wages in Mexico. Using a dynamic industry model with firm heterogeneity, it is predicted that import tariff elimination could reduce the incidence of informality by making more profitable to some firms to enter the formal sector,...

This paper examines the role of international trade, and specifically imports from low-wage countries, in determining patterns of job loss in U.S. manufacturing industries between 1992 and 2007. Motivated by intuitions from factor-proportions-inspired work on offshoring and heterogeneous firms...

Recent theories of firm heterogeneity emphasize between-firm wage differences as a new mechanism through which trade can affect wage inequality. Using linked employer-employee data for Sweden, we show that many of the stylized facts about wage inequality found in Helpman et al. (2012) for Brazil...

This paper develops a new framework for examining the distributional consequences of international trade that incorporates firm and worker heterogeneity, search and matching frictions in the labor market, and screening of workers by firms. Larger firms pay higher wages and exporters pay higher...

This paper presents an economic geography model with two differentiated sectors that exhibit weaker inter and stronger intra-industry input-output linkages. Labour is also differentiated according to skills in a hierarchy of tasks they can perform. Globalisation occurs in two distinct phases,...

We develop a methodology for identifying departures from relative factor price equality across regions that is valid under general assumptions about production, markets and factors. Application of this methodology to the United States reveals substantial and increasing deviations in relative...

This paper explores a newly-available panel data set merging balance sheet and international trade transaction data for Belgium. Both imports and exports appear to be highly concentrated among few firms and seem to have become more so over time. Focusing on manufacturing, we find that facts...

When will reducing trade barriers against a low wage country cause innovation to increase in high wage regions like the US or EU? We develop a model where factors of production have costs of adjustment and so are partially “trapped” in producing old goods. Trade liberalization with a low...