We generalize the Antras and Helpman (2004) model of the international organization of production in order to accommodate varying degrees of contractual frictions. In particular, we allow the degree of contractibility to vary across inputs and countries. A continuum of firms with heterogeneous...

This paper surveys the recent body of work in economics on the importance of global value chains (GVCs) in shaping international trade flows and multinational activity. On the empirical front, we begin reviewing several variants of the "macro approach" to measuring the relevance of global...

We develop a model of export-platform foreign direct investment (FDI) in which final goods are produced only with labor and there are no fixed costs of exporting. We derive a simple condition that determines whether an MNE's plants are substitutes or complements. This condition is shaped by the...

We present an economic rationale for countries resorting to foreign influence to export their ideology to other nations. Our model incorporates two fundamental elements: redistribution of the tax burden between capital owners and workers, and international capital mobility. The model highlights...

Multinational firms (MNEs) dominate trade flows, yet their global production decisions are often ignored in firm-level studies of exporting and importing. Using newly merged data on US firms' trade and multinational activity by country, we show that MNEs are more likely to trade not only with...

This paper develops a framework to study the interplay between world trade and interest rates. The model incorporates an explicit notion of time and of production length, along the lines of the 'Austrian' tradition of Böhm-Bawerk (1889). Changes in the interest rate affect production lengths,...

I develop a stylized model of multi-stage production in which the time length of each stage is endogenously determined. Letting the production process mature for a longer period of time increases labor productivity, but it comes at the cost of higher working capital needs for firms. Under...

Multinational firms (MNEs) accounted for 42 percent of US manufacturing employment, 87 percent of US imports, and 84 of US exports in 2007. Despite their disproportionate share of global trade, MNEs' input sourcing and final-good production decisions are often studied separately. Using newly...

Import tariffs tend to be higher for final goods than for inputs, a phenomenon commonly referred to as tariff escalation. Yet neoclassical trade theory - and modern Ricardian trade models, in particular - predict that welfare-maximizing tariffs are uniform across sectors. We show that tariff...