Social and economic and rights are incorporated into many national constitutions, and courts in many countries are effectively and legitimately enforcing them. However, the large majority of rights rulings addresses the cost of goods and services and focuses exclusively on access. There is now...

This paper takes a first look at the trade effects of China's Belt and Road Initiative, also referred to as the New Silk Road, on the 71 countries potentially involved. The initiative consists of several infrastructure investment projects to improve the land and maritime transportation in the...

This paper surveys the literature to document the main stylized facts, risks, and policy challenges related to the expansion of global nonfinancial corporate debt after the 2008–09 global financial crisis. Nonfinancial corporate debt steadily increased after the crisis, especially in emerging...

Use of temporary trade barriers has proliferated across countries, industries, and even policy instruments. This paper constructs a panel of bilateral, product-level United States steel imports that are matched to a unique data set on trade policy exclusions that are associated with the 2002...

The authors construct a new measure of connectivity in the global air transport network, covering 211 countries and territories for the year 2007. It is grounded in network analysis methods, and is based on a gravity-like model that is familiar from the international trade and regional science...

Recent increases in production of crop-based (or first-generation) biofuels have engendered increasing concerns over potential conflicts with food supplies and land protection, as well as disputes over greenhouse gas reductions. This has heightened a sense of urgency around the development of...

Is there evidence from China's pre-WTO accession period that newly imposed U.S. or EU import restrictions deflect Chinese exports to third markets? The authors examine this question by drawing on a newly constructed data set of U.S. and EU product-level import restrictions on Chinese trade...

The free flow of data across borders underpins today's globalized economy. But the flow of personal data outside the jurisdiction of national regulators also raises concerns about the protection of privacy. Addressing these legitimate concerns without undermining international integration is a...

The concept of empowerment is now widely used in several disciplines to characterize the states and social processes of individuals and communities. In economic development, the concept has come to mean women's power and agency in all economic domains and market-related interactions -- earning,...