Focusing on the adjustment of working-capital financing, we find two pieces of supporting evidence from international firm-level panel data covering the period 2002:I-2012:IV. First, for industries where specific investment in the input supplier-customer relationship is large, firms are more...

We use a unique panel of retail prices spanning 123 cities in 79 countries from 1990 to 2005, to uncover six novel properties of long-run international price dispersion. First, at the PPP level, virtually all (91.6%) of price dispersion is attributed to service-sector wages, consistent with a...

This paper shows, using a simple model, that wasteful innovations may result in a loss-loss situation where no country experiences an increase in welfare. If some countries introduce innovations that result in harmful effects on other countries, it may cause the adversely affected countries to...

Emerging markets represent more than 80 per cent of the world‘s population. As the past years have shown and the coming will doubtlessly confirm, pockets of growth are now firmly implanted in these countries.This will be henceforth more inclusive, relying on the aid and commitment of the...

Three important external determinants of sovereign spreads in emerging countries are reviewed: balance sheet effects, global risk aversion and contagion. While there are ways to reduce the detrimental impact of balance sheet effects, these are either hard to implement or costly. Insurance...

This paper examines Ontario's and Quebec's adjustments to the resource boom. Higher commodity prices, an appreciating dollar, and increased foreign competition between 2002 and 2007 led to a restructuring of the Central Canadian economies. The restructuring manifested itself in all areas of the...

The fear of massive job losses has prompted a fast-growing literature on offshoring and its impact on employment in advanced economies. This paper examines the situation for Belgium. It improves the offshoring intensity measure by computing a volume measure of the share of imported intermediates...

As our trading world becomes more globalized, who benefits and who gets hurt? This paper relies on the Ricardian model to explore the effects of technological improvements in underdeveloped countries on the welfare of developed countries. For example, trading between the United States and China,...

To benefit from the newly established EU Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), the Visegrád countries - Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, and Poland - have submitted their national recovery plans. The Czech and Slovak plans have already been approved by the EU, paving the way for the up-front...