Though the real exchange rate is a key price for most economies, our understanding of its determinants is still incomplete. This paper studies the implications of status competition in the marriage market for the real exchange rate. In theory, a rise in the sex ratio (increasing relative surplus...

China's high corporate savings rate is commonly claimed to be a key driver for the country's large current account surplus. The mainstream explanation for high corporate savings is a combination of windfall profits in state-owned firms, especially in resource sectors, and mis-governance of...

This paper provides both a conceptual framework for decomposing a country's gross exports into value-added components by source and a new bilateral database on value-added trade. Our parsimonious framework integrates all previous measures of vertical specialization and value-added trade in the...

The real effective exchange rate (REER) is one of the most cited statistical constructs in international macroeconomics. With the rising importance of offshoring and outsourcing, the standard measures are increasingly flawed. In addition, because different sectors within a country may...

We aim to make two contributions to the literature on the effects of transaction costs on financial price volatility. First, by using a research design with three ingredients (a common set of companies simultaneously listed on two stock exchanges; binding capital controls; different timing of...

This paper generalizes the gross exports accounting framework, initially proposed by Koopman, Wang, and Wei (2014) for a country's aggregate exports, to one at the sector, bilateral, and bilateral-sector levels. Such a generalization requires a conceptual distinction between value added exports...

This paper is the first chapter in the Oxford Companion to the Economics of China (Oxford University Press, forthcoming). Rather than trying to summarize other contributors' views, we provide our own perspectives on the Economics of China--the past experience and the future prospects. Our...

This paper studies the effect of transport infrastructure on the real exchange rate (RER) and reaches two relatively strong conclusions. First, while the list of robust determinants of the RER is not long, transport infrastructure belongs to that list. Many other potential determinants proposed...

Motivated by recent empirical work, this paper formalizes a theory of competitive savings - an arms race in household savings for mating competition that is made more fierce by an increase in the male-to-female ratio in the pre-marital cohort. Relative to the empirical work, the theory can...

While a reduction in import barriers in a partial equilibrium may be thought to lead to an increase in imports and a reduction in trade surplus, the general equilibrium effect can go in the opposite direction. We study how trade reforms affect current accounts by embedding a modified...