In this paper, we investigate time-dependent border and distance effects in the nineteenth century and document clear declines in the importance of these variables through time. What this suggests, in light of the work for the post-1950 era, is that researchers might have correctly identified...

We examine the sales of French manufacturing firms in 113 destinations, including France itself. Several regularities stand out: (1) the number of French firms selling to a market, relative to French market share, increases systematically with market size; (2) sales distributions are very similar...

In this paper we argue that the persistent global imbalances, the subprime crisis, and the volatile oil and asset prices that followed it, are tightly interconnected. They all stem from a global environment where sound and liquid financial assets are in scarce supply

Alexander Swoboda is one of the originators of the bipolar view that capital mobility creates pressure for countries to abandon intermediate exchange rate arrangements in favor of greater flexibility and harder pegs. This paper takes another look at the evidence for this hypothesis using two...

We examine the role of non-economic partnerships in promoting international economic exchange. Since far-sighted countries are more willing to join costly international partnerships such as environmental treaties, environmental engagement tends to encourage international lending. Countries with...

The U.S. dollar holds a dominant place in the invoicing of international trade, along two complementary dimensions. First, most U.S. exports and imports invoiced in dollars. Second, trade flows that do not involve the United States are also substantially invoiced in dollars, an aspect that has...