We document a set of bilateral trade data by commodity for 1962-2000, which is available from www.nber.org/data (International Trade Data, NBER-UN world trade data). Users must agree not to resell or distribute the data for 1984-2000. The data are organized by the 4-digit Standard International...

In this paper, we estimate the benefits to countries that purchase goods from China of having access to intermediary services provided by Hong Kong. Traders in Hong Kong supply information on markets and producers in China, which provides welfare gains to foreign firms using these services....

In less than three decades, China has grown from playing a negligible role in international trade to being one of the world's largest exporters, a substantial importer of raw materials, intermediate outputs, and other goods, and both a recipient and source of foreign investment. Not...

In less than three decades, China has grown from playing a negligible role in international trade to being one of the world's largest exporters, a substantial importer of raw materials, intermediate outputs, and other goods, and both a recipient and source of foreign investment. Not...

In this paper, we examine Hong Kong's role in intermediating trade between China and the rest of the world. Hong Kong traders distribute a large fraction of China's exports. Net of customs, insurance, and freight charges, re-exports of Chinese goods are much more expensive when they leave Hong...

We develop a procedure to rank-order countries and commodities using dis-aggregated American imports data. We find strong evidence that both countries and commodities can be ranked, consistent with the "product cycle" hypothesis. Countries habitually begin to export goods to the United States...

We develop an empirical framework to assess the importance of trade and technical change on the wages of production and non-production workers. Trade is measured by the foreign outsourcing of intermediate inputs, while technical change is measured by the shift towards high-technology capital...

Three sources of gains from trade under monopolistic competition are: (i) new import varieties available to consumers; (ii) enhanced efficiency as more productive firms begin exporting and less productive firms exit; (iii) reduced markups charged by firms due to import competition. The first...