In 1901, six Australian states joined together in political and economic union, creating an internal free trade area and adopting a common external tariff. This paper investigates the impact of federation on Australia's internal and international trade flows by studying changes in the "border...

This paper develops a two-country macro model with endogenous tradability to study features of international economic integration. Recent episodes of integration in Europe and North America suggest some surprising observations: while quantities of trade have increased significantly, especially...

International economic integration yields large potential welfare effects, even in a static constant returns competitive world economy. Our method is novel. The effect of border barriers on trade flows is often inferred from gravity models. But their rather atheoretic structure precludes welfare...

After decades of rising global economic integration, the world economy is now fragmenting. To measure this phenomenon, we introduce an index of geopolitical fragmentation derived from various empirical indicators. This index is developed using a flexible dynamic factor model with time-varying...

A large body of cross-country empirical evidence identifies monetary policy and trade integration as key determinants of business cycle co-movement. Partially consistent with this, many argue that the re-emergence of the gold standard allowed for the global transmission of a deflationary shock...

The paper presents a model of a monetary union designed to illuminate monetary and exchange rate policy in the West African Monetary Union (UMOA). Emphasis is placed on the interaction of the members of UMOA with each other, through the common central bank, and on their interaction with France...

Using two decades of data from twelve low-income countries in West Africa, we show that dust carried by harmattan trade winds increases infant and child mortality. Health investments respond to dust exposure, consistent with compensating behaviors. Despite these efforts, surviving children still...

Liberalization of tropical agricultural markets has brought globalization, in the sense that all producers now face world rather than domestic prices. Producer prices have tended to rise as a share of fob prices as intermediation costs and tax has declined. However, in conjunction with inelastic...

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...

We conducted a survey covering 20% of villages with 200-1000 population in rural Guinea-Bissau. We interviewed household heads, care-givers of children, and their teachers and schools. We analysed results from 9,947 children, aged 7-17, tested for literacy and numeracy competency. Only 27% of...