We use a new firm level data set that establishes the location, ownership, and activity of 650,000 multinational subsidiaries - close to a comprehensive picture of global multinational activity. A number of patterns emerge from the data. Most foreign direct investment (FDI) occurs between rich...

There is an emerging consensus among American politicians and many citizens that trade and globalization have undermined America's working class, resulting in a rise in U.S. populism. This view frequently targets the 2000 U.S. law that granted China “permanent normal trade relations” (PNTR)...

The WTO dispute resolution system is widely used and is a litigation-oriented process. It is at the core of global trade relations today. Both the United States and China have been aggressive users of it. Each country has shown a willingness to address contentious issues. This has been to the...

I present a new stylized fact from a large sample of countries for the period 2000-2006: bilateral foreign direct investment (FDI) flows are almost never observed in the absence of bilateral trade flows. I document a similar pattern using bilateral foreign affiliate sales (FAS), aggregating them...

Global Value Chains are a dominant feature of today's global economy, yet their analysis is still incipient from an empirical perspective. Building on a recent OECD-WTO database and the results of an on-going research at WTO, the present essay contributes at filling this gap. The effective...

This study analyzes the impact of bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) on the investment of multinational firms located outside the FTA-covered regions. Specifically, we analyze how Japanese firms located in the European Union (EU) changed their investment behavior in response to the EU-Korea...

Bilateral investment treaties (BITs) have proliferated over the past 50 years such that the number of pairs of countries with BITs is roughly as large as the number of country-pairs that belong to bilateral or regional preferential trade agreements (PTAs). The purpose of this study is to provide...

In recent years, South Asia has received growing attention as a region that is integrating successfully into the global economy. To maximize the benefits in terms of faster growth and poverty reduction, the region will need to strengthen regional and bilateral cooperation in several areas. In...

This paper focuses on the analysis of the relationship between maritime trade and transport cost in Latin America. The data available are disaggregated (SITC 5 digit level) maritime trade flows on trade routes within Latin America over the period 1999-2004. The contribution to the literature is...

European empires had two key economic aspects: the extraction of colonial wealth by colonizers, and the relevance of trade for the colonial economies. I build a simple model of decolonization that puts these two elements at centre stage. By controlling policy in the colony, the mother country...