<DIV><DIV><P>Over the past two decades, the percentage of the world’s population living on less than a dollar a day has been cut in half. How much of that improvement is because of—or in spite of—globalization? While anti-globalization activists mount loud critiques and the media report breathlessly on...</p></div></div>

Since last fall, President Obama has repeatedly declared that manufacturing jobs are coming back to America. In this article, however, we suggest that the return of U.S. manufacturing is still more promise than reality.In particular, while the recent increase in natural gas exploration and...

We identify a new set of stylized facts on the 2008-2009 trade collapse using detailed dis-aggregated data for the European Union, Brazil, Indonesia, and the United States. In particular, we decompose the fall in international trade into product entry and exit, price changes, and quantity...

In recent years, economists and other social scientists have devoted extensive research efforts to understanding the widening wage gap between high-skill and low-skill workers. This paper focuses on a slightly different question: how has globalization affected the relative share of income going...

Drawing on the experience and academic research of the 1990s, this chapter identifies five lessons: • Openness to trade has been a central element of successful growth strategies. In all countries that have sustained growth the share of trade in gross domestic product (GDP) has increased, and...

This paper provides an overview of the history of development research at the World Bank and points to new future directions in both what we research and how we research. Six main messages emerge. First, research and data have long been essential elements of the Bank’s country programs and its...

During the 1980s in Mexico the wage gap between skilled and unskilled workers widened. The authors assess the extent to which this increased wage inequality was associated with Mexico's sweeping trade reform in 1985. Examining data on 2,354 Mexican manufacturing plants for 1984–90 and...

This is a review of the recent book on industrial policy edited by Cimoli, Dosi, and Stiglitz.