Eastern European countries have experienced sharp declines in real GDP since 1990. One of the reasons for this decline is the Soviet trade shock, deriving from the collapse of the CMEA and of traditional export markets in the Soviet Union. This paper is an attempt to quantify the magnitude of...

Many markets are limited by laws and customs enforced by political and religious authorities. North, Wallis, and Weingast (2009) argue that the transition from limited access requires a series of steps like rule of law for elites and the creation of perpetually lived organizations. This paper...

We examine the role of trade policy uncertainty in shaping the import decisions of firms. If the adoption of a new input requires a sunk cost investment, then the prospect of price increases in that input, e.g. due to trade barriers, reduces the adoption of that input (a substitution effect) and...

We present the first comprehensive set of firm-level total factor productivity estimates for China's manufacturing sector that spans her entry into WTO. We find that productivity growth is among the highest compared to other countries. For our preferred estimate, the weighted average annual...

This chapter assesses China's integration into the global trading system by examining areas of international political-economic "friction" associated with its increased trade. We use a number of newly constructed data sets to examine tensions associated with its rapidly increasing trade and the...

We discuss China's stance in the WTO post-accession, noting the many issues with implementation of China's accession terms by 2007. We evaluate how much benefit China can realistically receive from WTO membership given current problems with dumping actions against China and trade restrictions...

This paper presents an analysis of the effect of China's entry into the WTO on the quality choices of Chinese exporters in terms of their outputs and their inputs. Using highly disaggregated firm-level data, we show that the quality upgrading made possible by China's tariff reductions was...

We identify "first generation" statistics to measure offshoring as the share of imported intermediate inputs in costs, along with O*NET data to measure the tradability of tasks. These data were used to measure the shifts in relative labor demand and relative wages due to offshoring. A limitation...

This paper studies how reduction in trade policy uncertainty affects firm export decisions. Using a firm-product level dataset on Chinese exports to the United States and the European Union in the years surrounding China's WTO accession, we provide strong evidence that reduction in trade policy...

What is the best way to reduce trade frictions when resources are scarce? To answer this question, we develop a framework that nests previous general equilibrium gravity models and show that the macro-economic implications of these various models depend crucially on two key model parameters,...