Many Americans are persuaded that trade agreements of the last 40 years have been a costly mistake. To be sure, open markets leave some people behind, and promises to help those hurt were broken. But on balance, expanding trade has greatly benefited the US economy, and policy approaches taken...

Concerns that (1) growth in developing countries could worsen the US terms of trade and (2) that increased US trade with developing countries will increase US wage inequality both implicitly reflect the assumption that goods produced in the United States and developing countries are close...

Conventional trade theory, which combines the Heckscher-Ohlin theory and the Stolper-Samuelson theorem, implies that expanded trade between developed and developing countries will increase wage equality in the former. This theory is widely applied. It serves as the basis for estimating the...

In 1963, US President John F. Kennedy said that "a rising tide lifts all the boats. And a partnership, by definition, serves both parties, without domination or unfair advantage." US international economic policy since World War II has been based on the premise that foreign economic growth is in...

America deserves credit for not having succumbed to the global financial crisis by repeating the protectionist mistakes of the 1930s. Nonetheless, since 2007, although lip service has been paid to boosting US exports, its trade policy accomplishments have been modest. This is unfortunate because...

The relentless increase in the US trade deficit since the early 1990s has raised concerns about America's ability to compete in international markets and given rise to calls for new ways to think about international competition and new ways of responding to US trade deficits. This policy brief...

International trade accounts for only a small share of growing income inequality and labor-market displacement in the United States. Lawrence deconstructs the gap in real blue-collar wages and labor productivity growth between 1981 and 2006 and estimates how much higher these wages might have...

The authors use the underlying data from purchasing power parity surveys to estimate the potential benefits from fully integrating goods markets among major OECD countries. These data are particularly useful because they are comprehensive, and every effort has been made to ensure that they are...