This paper presents theory and evidence showing that institutional reforms in developing countries can effectively expand their product varieties in export. Our model demonstrates that relaxing foreign ownership controls and improving contract enforcement can induce multinational companies to...

We present a global production sharing model that integrates the organizational choices of offshoring into the determination of relative wages in developing countries. The model shows that offshoring through foreign direct investment contributes more prominently than arm's length outsourcing to...

We study the effects of policy reforms in the South on the decisions of intrafirm and arm's length production transfers by Northern firms. We show theoretically that relaxing ownership controls and improving contract enforcement can induce multinational companies to expand product varieties to...

Most evidence for the resource curse comes from cross-country growth regressions suffers from a bias originating from the high and ever-evolving volatility in commodity prices. This paper addresses these issues by providing new cross-country empirical evidence for the effect of resources in...

This paper examines the spillover effects of sovereign rating news on European financial markets during the period 2007-2010. Our main finding is that sovereign rating downgrades have statistically and economically significant spillover effects both across countries and financial markets. The...

We examine the effects that variations in the international food prices have on democracy and intra-state conflict using panel data for over 120 countries during the period 1970-2007. Our main finding is that in Low Income Countries increases in the international food prices lead to a...

We examine the effect of the interaction between resource rents and democracy on corruption for a panel of 29 Sub-Saharan countries during the period from 1985 to 2007. We find that higher resource rents lead to more corruption and that the effect is significantly stronger in less democratic...

We use a new dataset on non-resource GDP to examine the impact of commodity price volatility on economic growth in a panel of up to 158 countries during the period 1970-2007. Our main finding is that commodity price volatility leads to a significant increase in non-resource GDP growth in...

This paper examines the effects that windfalls from international commodity price booms have on net foreign assets in a panel of 145 countries during the period 1970-2007. The main finding is that windfalls from international commodity price booms lead to a significant increase in net foreign...