This paper examines the extent to which the destination of exports matters for the input prices paid by firms, using detailed customs and firm-product-level data from Portugal. We use exchange-rate movements as a source of variation in export destinations and find that exporting to richer...

Researchers typically invoke theoretical assumptions to estimate mark-ups. Instead, we directly obtain mark-ups by surveying Pakistani soccer-ball producers. We document six facts: (1) Mark-ups are more dispersed than costs; (2) Mark-ups and costs increase with firm size; (3) The mark-up...

This paper presents a tractable formalization and an empirical investigation of the quality-complementarity hypothesis, the hypothesis that input quality and plant productivity are complementary in generating output quality. We embed this complementarity in a general-equilibrium trade model with...

This paper examines how schools choose class size and how households sort in response to those choices. Focusing on the highly liberalized Chilean education market, we develop a model in which schools are heterogeneous in an underlying productivity parameter, class size is a component of school...

Previous models of the demand for money are either inconsistent with contemporaneous adjustment of the price level to expected changes in the nominal money supply or imply implausible fluctuations in interest rates in response to unexpected changes in the nominal money supply. This paper...

The recent debate over minimum wages raises two questions. First, should policy makers no longer believe that minimum wages entail negative consequences for teenagers? Second, should economists discard the competitive labor market model? Our evidence for teenagers, using matched CPS surveys,...

This paper documents the organizational status over time of 183 large leveraged buyouts (LBOs) completed between 1979 and 1986. As of August 1990, 63% of the LaOs are privately owned, 14% are independent public companies, and 23% are owned by other public companies As time since the LBO...

We examine the effect of air quality regulation on the productivity of some of the most heavily regulated manufacturing plants in the United States, the oil refineries of the Los Angeles (South Coast) Air Basin. We use direct measures of local air pollution regulation in this region to estimate...

This paper examines the determinants of GED acquisition. high school graduation and postsecondary training and schooling choices. Economic factors determining dropping out are considered. The determinants of high school certification by exam are fundamentally different from the determinants of...

The standard source for pre-WWII global freight rate trends is the Isserlis British tramp shipping index. We think it is flawed, and that its sources offer vastly more information than the Isserlis aggregate contains. The new data confirm the precipitous decline in nominal freight rates before...