This paper describes the updating of the NBER trade dataset, which now provides U.S. import and export values to the year 2001, disaggregated by Harmonized System (HS), Standard International Trade Classification (SITC), and the U.S. Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) categories. In...

Global trade fell 20 percent relative to world GDP during the global recession of 2008-2009. We develop a dynamic multi-country general equilibrium model of international trade to investigate the sources of this collapse. Our framework provides a complete accounting for what happened to...

The ratio of global trade to GDP declined by nearly 30 percent during the global recession of 2008-2009. This large drop in international trade has generated significant attention and concern. Did the decline simply reflect the severity of the recession for traded goods industries? Or...

Global trade fell 30 percent relative to GDP during the Great Recession of 2008-2009. Did this collapse result from factors impeding international transactions or did it simply reflect the greater severity of the recession in highly traded sectors? We answer this question with detailed...

The unit values of internationally traded goods are heavily influenced by quality. We model this in an extended monopolistic competition framework where, in addition to choosing price, firms simultaneously choose quality. We allow countries to have non-homothetic demand for quality. The optimal...

The World Trade Organization forecasts that the volume of global trade will in 2009 exhibit its biggest contraction since World War II. This large drop in international trade is generating significant attention and concern. Given the severity of the current global recession, is international...

This paper examines how factor proportions determine the structure of commodity trade. It integrates a many-country version of a Heckscher-Ohlin model with a continuum of goods with Paul R. Krugman's (1980) model of monopolistic competition and transport costs. The commodity structure of...

The length of the transmission lags from monetary policy to output has been the subject of much research over the years, but there are serious problems in isolating the lags with any precision. This paper uses a simple model of Australian output to estimate the length of the lags, and then...

This paper reviews issues in the econometric modelling of monetary policy in the light of recent experience and research. Two main sets of issues are covered: first, the operation of policy including the specification of the instrument and objectives; and second, the transmission of monetary...