We decompose the "China shock" into two components that induce different adjustments for firms exposed to Chinese exports: a horizontal shock affecting firms selling goods that compete with similar imported Chinese goods, and a vertical shock affecting firms using inputs similar to the imported...

The occupation payments made by France to Nazi Germany between 1940 and 1944 represent one of the largest recorded international transfers and contributed significantly to financing the overall German war effort. Using a neoclassical growth model that incorporates essential features of the...

The French Opposition to the war in Iraq in early 2003, prompted calls for a boycott of French wine in the US. We measure the magnitude of consumers' participation in the boycott, and look at basic evidence of who participates. Conservative estimates indicate that the boycott resulted in 26%...

Is the persistently high fertility in West Africa today rooted in the decades of forced labor migration under colonial rule? We study the case of Burkina Faso, considered the largest labor reservoir in West Africa by the French colonial authorities. Hundreds of thousands of young men were...

In this paper, we empirically assess the causal links between trade and individual income risk and study the role that human capital plays in this relationship using a rich, worker-level, longitudinal data set from Germany spanning 1976 to 2012. Our estimates suggest substantial heterogeneity in...

Collective reputation implies an important externality. Among firms trading internationally, quality shocks about one firm's products could affect the demand of other firms from the same origin country. We study this issue in the context of a large-scale scandal that affected the Chinese dairy...

This paper documents the rise of the Internet as a source of state-tax-free cigarettes and its impact on taxed sales elasticities. Using data on cigarette tax rates, taxable cigarette sales and individual smoking rates by state from 1980 to 2005 merged with data on Internet penetration, the...

This paper explores the dynamics of the transfer of U.S. patents and the significance of the initial missallocation of patent property rights. Here we find that the initial missallocation of patent property rights is large and differs substantially across patentees and technology fields. We also...

This paper looks at the effect of credit constraints on skill acquisition when agents have heterogeneous abilities and wealth. We use a two factor general equilibrium model and assume credit markets are absent. We explore the effects of trade on factor earnings as well as the evolution of the...

Transaction costs in trading involve both risk and return. The return is associated with the cost of immediate execution and the risk is a result of price movements during a more gradual trading. The paper shows that the trade-off between risk and return in optimal execution should reflect the...