This paper analyzes the role of network externalities and expectations about them in the formulation of trade policy. Their effects are studied in duopoly situations when products are compatible and when they are incompatible and when multimarket effects are possible. Network externalities and...

We study the distribution of economic activity, as proxied by lights at night, across 250,000 grid cells of average area 560 square kilometers. We first document that nearly half of the variation can be explained by a parsimonious set of physical geography attributes. A full set of country...

Trade in business services has been attracting attention from academic researchers, policy makers, and business journalists. While there are many anecdotes, there has been little in the way of formal theory applied to this issue. In this paper, we adapt a general model of fragmentation of...

We analyze the performance of Indian banks during 2007–09 relative to their vulnerability to a crisis measured using pre-crisis data, in order to study the impact of government guarantees on bank performance during a crisis. Using bank branch-level regulatory data, we exploit geographic...

We compute quality-adjusted price indexes for Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) for the period 1999-2004, using data on prices and characteristics of 203 models sold by 12 manufacturers. The PDA market is growing in size, it is technologically dynamic with very substantial changes in measured...

This paper analyzes the financing terms that support international trade and sheds light on how and why these arrangements affect trade. Using detailed transaction level data from a U.S. based exporter of frozen and refrigerated food products, primarily poultry, it begins by describing broad...

We survey recent literature on the causes of the collapse in international trade during the 2008-2009 global recession. We argue that the evidence points to the collapse in aggregate expenditure, concentrated on trade-intensive durable goods, as the main driver of the trade collapse. Inventory...