Under plausible assumptions about preferences and technology, the model in this paper suggests that the entire volume of world trade matters for wage inequality. Therefore, trade integration, even among identical countries, is likely to increase the skill premium. Further, we argue that...

A by now large literature in regional economics has greatly improved our understanding of the determinants of the observed spatial disparities in productivity. However, this literature neglects what seems to be a robust and persistent fact accompanying regional productivity differences: high...

We show how, in general equilibrium models featuring increasing returns, imperfect competition and endogenous markups, changes in the scale of economic activity affect income distribution across factors. Whenever final goods are gross-substitutes (gross-complements), a scale expansion raises...

This paper investigates the relationship between trade openness and the size of government, both theoretically and empirically. We show that openness can increase the size of governments through two channels: (1) a terms of trade externality, whereby trade lowers the domestic cost of taxation...

We study how firm and foreign market characteristics affect the geographic distribution of exporterssales. To this purpose, we use export intensities (the ratio of exports to sales) across destinations as our key measures of firmsrelative involvement in heterogeneous foreign markets. In a...

This paper formalizes in a fully-rational model the popular idea that politicians perceive an electoral cost in adopting costly reforms with future benefits and reconciles it with the evidence that reformist governments are not punished by voters. To do so, it proposes a model of elections where...

We analyze recent contributions to growth theory based on the model of expanding variety of Romer (1990). In the first part, we present different versions of the benchmark linear model with imperfect competition. These include the "lab equipment" model, "labor-for-intermediates" and "directed...

In a world where poor countries provide weak protection for intellectual property rights, market integration shifts technical change in favor of rich nations. Through this channel, free trade may amplify international income differences. At the same time, integration with countries where...

In a world where poor countries provide weak protection for intellectual property rights (IPRs), market integration shifts technical change in favor of rich nations. Through this channel, free trade may amplify international income differences. At the same time, integration with countries where...

This paper formalizes in a fully-rational model the popular idea that politicians perceive an electoral cost in adopting costly reforms with future benets and reconciles it with the evidence that reformist governments are not punished by voters. To do so, it proposes a model of elections where...