In this dissertation I examine a set of crucial topics in the political economy of international trade, with an emphasis on firm-level heterogeneity. The first chapter is an empirical study of the new trade theories in which firm heterogeneity and trade costs play central roles in shaping the...

Recently gravity trade models are applied to disaggregated trade data. Here many zeros arecharacteristic. In the presence of excess zeros usual Poisson Pseudo Maximum Likelihood(PPML) is still consistent, the variance covariance matrix however is invalid. Correcteconomic interpretation however...

In this paper we study the determinants of the factor content of the CEE agricultural trade. Examining empirically three hypothesis, which relate cross-country differences in technology, relative factor abundance and transaction costs and market imperfections to the factor content of trade, we...

O Rio Grande do Norte tem sido apontado desde a década de 1990 em vários estudos como um dos principais produtores e exportadores brasileiros de frutas frescas, no entanto, existe uma carência de estudos capazes de responder a questionamentos como: qual o desempenho competitivo do Rio Grande...

Financial development has been argued as a potential source of comparative advantage and its relationships with trade has been theoretically developed. This theory posits that countries that are well financially developed should experience greater volumes of international trade. We empirically...

This paper analyzes the variance in accounting profitability within the European food industry. Based on a large panel data set, the variance in return on assets (ROA) is decomposed into year, country, industry, and firm effects. Further on, we include all possible interactions between year,...

The present study examines factor contentin the CEE transition country agricultural trade.However, deviating from the traditional approach, wedo not test the HOV prediction. Instead, we examine thetheoretical predictions that relate the factor content ofinternational trade to cross-country...

This paper identifies an internal inconsistency in the Heckscher-Ohlin (H-O) models of international exchange. The inconsistency stems from assuming homogeneity of inputs within a population. This assumption annihilates individual comparative advantage, benefits from exchange and, consequently,...

This dissertation studies the roles of comparative advantage, monopolistic competition, and firm-level heterogeneity in international trade.The first essay investigates cross-country and cross-industry variation in the fractions of exporters among domestic firms. The paper presents a model of an...

We estimate selection and sorting effects on the evolution of the private return to schooling for college graduates during China’s reform between 1988 and 2002. We pay special attention to the changing role of sorting by ability versus budget-constraint effects as China’s education policy...