The relative performance of China and India is compared using two different methods and they provide a very different picture of their relative performance. We compare the average absolute values of indictors for the decade of the 1980s, 1990s and the 2000s. We use indicators such as the current...

A substantial part of international differences in prices of individual products, both goods and services, can be explained by differences in per capita income, wage compression, or low wage dispersion among low-wage workers, and short-term exchange rate fluctuations. Higher per capita income is...

Purchasing power parity exchange rates, or PPPs, are price indexes that summarize prices in each country relative to a numeraire country, typically the United States. These numbers are used to compare living standards across countries, by academics in studies of economic growth, particularly...

We perform an econometric analysis of the effect of new drug launches on longevity, using data from the IMS Health Drug Launches database and the WHO Mortality Database. Our data cover virtually all of the diseases borne by people in 52 countries during the period 1982-2001, and enable us to...

The connections between globalization and democracy are a classic question in international political economy and a topic much debated in foreign policy circles. While the analytical literature is extensive, few previous studies have acknowledged the possibility of bidirectional causality or...

Two closely related numerical general equilibrium models of world trade are used to analyze the potential consequences of US-China bilateral retaliation on trade flows and welfare. One is a conventional Armington trade model with five regions, the US, China, EU, Japan and Rest of the World, and...

There is a broad consensus among US opinion leaders that our economic problem is largely one of failures of international competition -- that trade deficits have eroded our manufacturing base, that inability to sell on world markets has been a major drag on economic growth, and that imports from...

There is clear evidence that during 1980-90 more exports are positively associated with higher growth rates across Chinese cities. In comparison, in the late 1980s, the contribution to growth comes mainly from foreign investment. The contribution of foreign investment comes in the form of...

We analyze market impediments to the process of structural adjustment. We focus on incomplete-contract inefficiencies in the transactions between workers and firms that render the quasi-rents from 'specific' investment appropriable. During adjustment, the result is a depressed rate of creation...