Conventional trade theory, which combines the Heckscher-Ohlin theory and the Stolper-Samuelson theorem, implies that expanded trade between developed and developing countries will increase wage inequality in the developed countries. This theory is widely applied. It serves as the basis for...

The major theme of this paper is that the commercial banks have weathered the debt crisis, while many debtor countries remain in economic paralysis or worse. There is a growing consensus that much of the LDC debt will not be fully serviced in the future, and that consensus is reflected in at...

Are the well-known facts about urbanization in the United States also true for the developing world? We compare American metropolitan areas with comparable geographic units in Brazil, China and India. Both Gibrat's Law and Zipf's Law seem to hold as well in Brazil as in the U.S., but China and...

Poverty is strongly associated with worse health across countries and within countries across individuals. However, not all poor individuals suffer from poor health: the effects of poverty on health vary across place and time. In this review, we discuss the evidence documenting these patterns,...

Expansionary fiscal policies have increased significantly following the subprime crisis in 2007 and the COVID-19 crisis, leading to fiscal dominance concerns, where a growing share of monetary authorities may be forced to deviate from policy targets to accommodate fiscal policies. Meanwhile,...

"This paper studies the cycles of nationalization and privatization in resource-rich economies. We discuss available evidence on the drivers and consequences of privatization and nationalization, review the existing literature, and present illustrative case studies. Our main contribution is then...

"While substantial research finds that financial development boosts overall economic growth, we study whether financial development disproportionately raises the incomes of the poor and alleviates poverty. Using a broad cross-country sample, we distinguish among competing theoretical predictions...

Inward and outward direct investment (FDI) stocks and flows tend to go together, across countries and over time. The countries that invest extensively abroad are usually also large recipients of FDI. There is little evidence that flows of FDI are a major influence on capital formation. That lack...

A Third World data base documenting commodity and factor prices 1870-1940 has been collected, yielding annual time series on wage/rental ratios, land/labor ratios, the terms of trade, and other explanatory variables for: Argentina, Burma, Egypt, Japan, Korea, the Punjab, Taiwan, Thailand and...

We provide an analysis of real economic growth prospects in emerging markets after financial liberalizations. In contrast with previous research, we identify the financial liberalization dates and examine the influence of liberalizations while controlling for a number of other macroeconomic and...