This paper documents an unusual and possibly significant phenomenon: The export of skills embodied in goods, services, or capital from poorer to richer countries. We first present a set of stylized facts. Using a measure that combines the sophistication of a country's exports with the average...

Th ere is growing clamor in industrial countries for additional border taxes on imports from countries with lower carbon prices. We confirm the findings of other research that unilateral emissions cuts by industrial countries will have minimal carbon leakage effects. However, output and exports...

Two aspects of global imbalances - undervalued exchange rates and sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) - require a multilateral response. For reasons of inadequate leverage and eroding legitimacy, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has not been effective in dealing with undervalued exchange rates....

This paper elaborates on a number of key principles that need to underpin a coherent and development-friendly architecture for the WTO. The key principles include enlarging the scope of WTO bargaining to include labor flows as well as capital flows; creating a structure that would provide a...

Small and poor countries pose a challenge for the World Trade Organization (WTO). These countries have acquired a significant say in WTO decision-making. However, they have limited ability to engage in the reciprocity game that is at the heart of the WTO, and have limited interests in the...

The current perspective on the flow of people is almost exclusively focused on permanent migration from poorer to richer countries and on immigration policies in industrial countries. But international mobility of people should no longer be seen as a one-time event or one-way flow from South to...

International negotiations on climate change have been dogged by mutual recriminations between rich and poor countries, constricted by the zero-sum arithmetic of a shrinking global carbon budget, and overtaken by shifts in economic power between industrialized and developing countries. To...

This paper estimates how changes in China's exchange rates would affect exports from competitor countries in third-country markets -- in other words, the "spillover effect." The authors use recent theory to develop an identification strategy, with a key role for the competition between China and...

The World Trade Organization has been until recently an effective framework for cooperation because it has continually adapted to changing economic realities. The current Doha Agenda is an aberration because it does not reflect one of the largest shifts in the international economic and trading...

How global emissions reduction targets can be achieved equitably is a key issue in climate change discussions. This paper presents an analytical framework to encompass contributions to the literature on equity in climate change, and highlights the consequences -- in terms of future emissions...