It is commonly found that distributions that seem to be lognormal over a broad range change to a power-law (Pareto) distribution for the last few percentiles. The distributions of species abundance, income and wealth as well as file, city and firm sizes are examples with this structure. We...

We develop a simple model where exporting firms are characterized by het- erogeneous productivity and may face a liquidity constraint, which in turn is affected by exchange rate changes. This setup is used to analyze exchange rate exposure, i.e. the sensitivity of profits to exchange rate...

Considerable efforts have been made in the recent years to produce detailed topolo- gies of the Internet. While Internet topology data have brought to the attention of a wide and somehow diverse audience of scholars they have been so far over- looked by economic analyses. In this paper we...

As the recent crisis has forcefully suggested, understanding financial-market interconnectedness is of a paramount importance to explain systemic risk, stability and economic dynamics. In this paper, we address these issues along two related perspectives. First, we explore the statistical...

Several economic phenomena are found to follow an approximate Pareto distribution, at least in the upper tail. The debate is well established for the distribution of wealth and business firms, and has recently been particularly animated with respect to city sizes. In this paper we contribute to...

This paper contributes to the literature explaining firm-level heterogenenity in the extensive margin of trade, defined as the number of products exported by each firm. We develop a dynamic model where firms must invest in RD to maintain and increase their portfolio of goods: the process of...

The proper characterization of the size distribution of business firms represents an important issue in economic literature, with the most common reference distribu- tions being the lognormal and the Pareto varieties. This analysis is related to some methodological issues that are rarely...

The paper develops a model of proportionate growth to describe the dynamics of international trade flows. We show that a large number of the empirical regularities characterizing international trade -such as the fraction of zero trade flows across pairs of countries, the positive relationship...

Global imbalances are not new as much as the effort to address them. In the mid 1980s the phenomenon led the most industrialised countries to orchestrate a devaluation of the US dollar so as to reduce the US trade deficit. Some economists have called for a similar "New Plaza" agreement to tackle...

The paper analyzes the link between financial constraints and firm export behavior. Our main finding is that firms enjoying better financial health are more likely to become exporters. The result contrasts with the previous empirical literature which found evidence that export participation...