Does schooling generate social returns in excess of the private returns captured by the individual who makes the human capital investment? As a strategy to detect human capital externalities I use Dutch survey data to estimate the impact of the average human capital stock in a region on...

This paper uses a model of import prices whereby exporters to the euro area set export prices partly as a mark-up on their production costs (i.e., the degree of exchange rate pass-through) and partly in line with euro area producer prices (i.e., pricing-to-market). Using both time series and...

Global trade contracted quickly and severely during the global crisis. This paper, using a unique dataset of French firms, matching together export data with firm-level credit constraints, shows that most of the 2008-2009 trade collapse is accounted by the unprecedented demand shock and by...

The unprecedented drop in international trade during the last quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009 has mainly been analysed at the macroeconomic or sectoral level. However, exporters who are heterogeneous in terms of productivity, size or external financial dependence should be...

The purpose of this paper is to explain the relation between the Border Effect and industrial concentration. This is achieved by founding this relation on the Home Market Effect and testing the robustness of this foundation through an application to the European Single Market. A sectorial...

Some committees convene behind closed doors while others publicly discuss issues and make their decisions. This paper studies the role of open and closed committee decision making in presence of external influence. We show that restricting the information of interest groups may reduce the bias...

This paper presents a positive theory of centralization of political decisions in an international union. My central claim is that lobbies play a role in determining the assignment of competencies to the union because their power of influence can increase or decrease under centralization. I show...

This paper investigates the relationship between bilateral FDI positions and cross-country business cycle correlations in the period 1982–2001. We find that countries that have comparatively intensive FDI relations also have more synchronized business cycles during 1995–2001. Before 1995, we...