One reason why countries service their external debts is the fear that default might lead to shrinkage of international trade. If so, then creditors should systematically lend more to countries with which they share closer trade links. We develop a simple theoretical model to capture this...

Perhaps the most striking feature of "crowdfunding" is the broad geographic dispersion of investors in small, early-stage projects. This contrasts with existing theories that predict entrepreneurs and investors will be co-located due to distance-sensitive costs. We examine a crowdfunding setting...

The real effective exchange rate (REER) is one of the most cited statistical constructs in international macroeconomics. With the rising importance of offshoring and outsourcing, the standard measures are increasingly flawed. In addition, because different sectors within a country may...

This paper considers the evolution of global transportation usage over the past half century and its implications for supply chains. Transportation usage per unit of real output has more than doubled as costs decreased by a third. Participation of emerging economies in world trade and...

A gravity model is used to assess the separate effects of exchange rate volatility and currency unions on international trade. The panel data set used includes bilateral observations for five years spanning 1970 through 1990 for 186 countries. In this data set, there are over one hundred...

We study how international trade and the exporting decisions of establishments affect establishment creation over the business cycle in a general equilibrium model. The model captures two key features of establishment and exporter dynamics: i) new establishments start small and grow over time...

Almost Ideal gravity associates zero trade flows with variable and fixed trade cost variation in a flexible demand system. Latent trade shares between non-partners are inferred from the Tobit estimator applied to trade among 75 countries and 25 sectors in 2006. Latent Trade Bias (LTB) is the...