Much foreign direct investment is between high-income countries, but investment in some developing and transition regions, while still modest, grew rapidly in the 1990s. Adjusting for market size, much investment stays close to home; adjusting for distance, much heads toward the countries with...

In early 2003, France actively tried to thwart the plans of the Bush administration to build international support for a war to depose Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein. In response, calls in the United States for a boycott of French products, wine in particular, rebounded through all forms of media....

Using a data set of 72 manufacturing industries, this paper investigates the link between trade and skills by looking at the employment of engineers and scientists in manufacturing and the export success of the products they make. Major results are that the world buys U.S. manufactures that use...

Despite a trend toward more flexible rates, more than half the world's countries maintain fixed or managed exchange rates. In the 1980s and 1990s, developing countries as a group progressively liberalized their trade regimes, but some governments defend their exchange rate in actions that run...

Since the September 2001 terrorist attacks, security has became paramount in both domestic politics and the daily lives of Americans. In the immediate aftermath of those attacks, policymakers focused on air passenger traffic. As the debate broadened, however, the issue of goods movement moved to...

Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, U.S. policymakers and their international counterparts quickly devised new programs for protecting seaports and the maritime supply chain. This paper focuses on one such program, the U.S. Container Security Initiative, which screens and...

States within the United States have long promoted goods exports to help their businesses and improve their economies. In contrast, promotion of services exports remains relatively unexplored, although the value of promoting services exports is potentially large. In 1995, services trade entered...

Participating in insurgency is physically risky. Why do people do so? Using new data on 3,799 payments to insurgent fighters by Al Qa'ida Iraq, we find that: (i) wages were extremely low relative to outside options, even compared to unskilled labor; (ii) the estimated risk premium is negative;...