We study the effect “globalization” on wage inequality. Our “global” economy resembles Rosen (1981) “Superstars” economy, where a) innovations in production and communication technologies enable suppliers to reach a larger mass of consumers and to improve the (perceived) quality of...

In this paper we test the firm-specific determinants of delocation to low-wage countries on the part of Italian firms. We collect data through a survey on 167 firms the in mechanics and textile industries. Our data show that in recent years there has been an upsurge in FDI activity by Italian...

This paper investigates the extent to which expansion of international production by US multinational reduces labor demand at home and at other foreign locations. The few existing empirical studies on this subject maintain, along with firm’s cost minimizing behavior, perfectly variable inputs....

In a traditional agrarian sector tenancy contracts aloe farmworkers to produce and accumulate wealth. This is important in a dual economy characterized in its modern sector by a n high degree of credit imperfections. The wealth constrained workers can accumulate wealth by working as...

One of the best established empirical results in international economics is that bilateral trade decreases with distance. Although well-known, these results have not been systematically analyzed before. We examine 1052 distance effects estimated in 78 papers. Information collected on each...

We survey and assess the literature on the positive and negative effects of ethnic diversity on economic policies and outcomes. Our focus is on communities of different size and organizational structure, such as countries, cities in developed countries, villages and groups in developing...

We examine both grants and net loans made to low income countries during the last two decades to understand the main reasons that motivated the behaviour of both donors and creditors. We find that the total amount of net transfers to HIPCs, as compared to non-HIPCs, have been increasing with...

This paper derives the optimal composition of the Brazilian public debt by looking at the relative impact of the risk and cost of alternative debt instruments on the probability of missing the stabilization target. This allows to price risk against the expected cost of debt service and thus to...