The contending fundamental determinants of growth -- institutions, geography and culture --exhibit far more persistence than do the growth rates they are supposed to explain. So, what exogenous shocks might account for the variance around those persistent fundamentals? The terms of trade seems...

We build a two-country general equilibrium model to analyze the effects of cross-border data flows and pre-existing development gaps in data economies on each country's production and international trade. Raw data as byproducts of consumption can be transformed into various types of working data...

We study the distribution of economic activity, as proxied by lights at night, across 250,000 grid cells of average area 560 square kilometers. We first document that nearly half of the variation can be explained by a parsimonious set of physical geography attributes. A full set of country...

This paper addresses the complex relationship between geography and macroeconomic growth. We investigate the ways in which geography may matter directly for growth, controlling for economic policies and institutions, as well as the effects of geography on policy choices and institutions. We find...

Hegemonic powers, like the United States and China, exert influence on other countries by threatening the suspension or alteration of financial and trade relationships. Mechanisms that generate gains from integration, such as external economies of scale and specialization, also increase the...

Even though Australia has experienced frequent and large commodity export price shocks like the Third World, it seems to have dealt with the volatility better. Why? This paper explores Australian terms of trade volatility since 1901. It identifies two major price shock episodes before the recent...

W. Arthur Lewis argued that a new international economic order emerged between 1870 and 1913, and that global terms of trade forces produced rising primary product specialization and de-industrialization in the poor periphery. More recently, modern economists argue that volatility reduces growth...

The Global Financial Crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic were two major shocks to the world economy in the 21st century. In this study, we analyze the patterns of recessions and recoveries of 101 advanced and developing economies. We identify the turning points of recessions and expansions between...

This paper analyzes the welfare implications of international spillovers related to productivity gains, changes in market size, or government spending. We introduce trade costs and endogenous varieties in a two-country general-equilibrium model with monopolistic competition, drawing a...

The empirical observation that "large firms tend to export, whereas small firms do not" has transformed the way economists think about the determinants of international trade. Yet, it has had surprisingly little impact about how economists think about trade policy. In this paper, we characterize...