In this paper, we provide a case study of the impact of globalization on income inequality using data across Chinese regions. The literature on cross-country studies has been criticized because differences in legal systems and other institutions across countries are difficult to control for, and...

This paper offers a new interpretation of the connection between openness and good governance. Assuming that corruption and bad governance drive out international trade and investment more than domestic trade and investment, a naturally more open economy' as determined by its size and geography...

We propose a theory of endogenous composition of capital flows that highlights two asymmetries between international equity and debt financing. In our model, poor institutional quality leads to an inefficiently low share of equity financing as well as an inefficiently high volume of total...

Has the occurrence of "extreme capital flow movements"--episodes of sudden surges, stops, flight and retrenchment--changed since the Global Financial Crisis (GFC)? This paper addresses this question by updating and building on the dataset and methodology introduced in Forbes and Warnock (2012)...

Though the real exchange rate is a key price for most economies, our understanding of its determinants is still incomplete. This paper studies the implications of status competition in the marriage market for the real exchange rate. In theory, a rise in the sex ratio (increasing relative surplus...

Counter to extant stylized facts, using newly available data on country allocations in U.S. investors' foreign equity portfolios we find that (i) U.S. investors do not exhibit returns-chasing behavior, but, consistent with partial portfolio rebalancing, tend to sell past winners; and (ii) U.S....

China's high corporate savings rate is commonly claimed to be a key driver for the country's large current account surplus. The mainstream explanation for high corporate savings is a combination of windfall profits in state-owned firms, especially in resource sectors, and mis-governance of...

This paper provides both a conceptual framework for decomposing a country's gross exports into value-added components by source and a new bilateral database on value-added trade. Our parsimonious framework integrates all previous measures of vertical specialization and value-added trade in the...

While openness to trade is a well-recognized hallmark of many successful emerging market economies known as "growth miracles," another component of the growth model is a leapfrogging strategy - the use of policies to guide the industrial structural transformation ahead of a country's factor...

We assess the development of local currency bond markets in emerging market economies (EMEs). Supported by policies and laws that helped to improve macroeconomic stability and creditor rights, many local currency EME bond markets have grown substantially over the past decade and have also...