The paper provides a general-equilibrium model where incomplete international financial markets lead to insufficient industrial specialization and low international trade. As international portfolio diversification is limited and productivity is uncertain, investors wish to maintain a...

The paper investigates whether deviations from the law of one price can attributed to real factors, such as transportation and distribution costs. Even if trade is costly, the prices of a good at di.erent locations will be linked as long as the good is traded. Instead of the usual iceberg...

We estimate the effect of imported machines on the wages of machine operators utilizing Hungarian linked employer-employee data. We infer exposure to imported machines from detailed trade statistics of the firm and the occupation description of the worker. We find that workers exposed to...

Using detailed U.S. and Spanish export data, we document that administrative trade costs of per shipment nature (documentation, customs clearance and inspection) lead to less frequent and larger-sized shipments, i.e. more lumpiness, in international trade. We build a model to analyze these...

Why is GDP so much more volatile in poor countries than in rich ones? To answer this question, we propose a theory of technological diversification. Production makes use of different input varieties, which are subject to imperfectly correlated shocks. As in endogenous growth models,...

This research output confirms the strength of the approach underpinning the EFIGE project, which is based on the recognition that firms are heterogeneous in the extent and the pattern of their internationalisation, as they are in many other respects. The project provides more, and more precise,...

Why is GDP so much more volatile in poor countries than in rich ones? To answer this question, we propose a theory of technological diversification. Production makes use of different input varieties, which are subject to imperfectly correlated shocks. As in endogenous growth models,...

Exporters are few---less than one fifth among U.S. manufacturing firms---and are larger than non-exporting firms---about 4-5 times more total sales per firm. These facts are often cited as support for models with economies of scale and firm heterogeneity as in Melitz (2003). We find that the...

We estimate a model of importers in Hungarian micro data and conduct counterfactual policy analysis to investigate the effect of imports on productivity. We find that importing all foreign varieties would increase firm productivity by 12 percent, almost two-fifths of which is due to imperfect...