On September 11, 2000, Jamie B. Stewart, Jr., First Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, delivered the following remarks at Sibos 2000, the international banking operations seminar sponsored by the payment network SWIFT (Society for Worldwide...

Traditional economic wisdom claims that - while global economic integration is beneficial for economic performance - a country's trade specialization pattern has no impact on its economic performance. In this paper, we seek to cast doubt on this aspect of mainstream economics using a very...