The global imbalance explanation of the financial crisis of 2007-09 suggests that demand for riskless assets from countries with current account surpluses created fragility in countries with current account deficits, most notably, in the United States. We examine this explanation by analyzing...

The fact that large manufacturing plants export relatively more than small plants has been at the foundation of much work in the international trade literature. We examine this fact using Census micro data on plant shipments from the Commodity Flow Survey. We show the fact is not entirely an...

We build a two country asymmetric DSGE model with two features: (i) endogenous and slow diffusion of technologies from the developed to the developing country, and (ii) adjustment costs to investment flows. We calibrate the model to match the Mexico-U.S. trade and FDI flows. The model is able to...

How do trade liberalizations affect relative factor prices and to what extent do they cause factors to reallocate across sectors? We first present a general framework that nests a wide range of models that have been used to study the link between globalization and factor prices. Under some...

This paper investigates the feasibility of creating a common-currency union consisting of 16 countries in Southern Africa. We estimate an augmented-gravity model that includes public deficit, public debt, public expenditure, inflation, and the foreign reserves position. We also integrate...

This paper documents a decreasing trend in the geographical concentration of EU agrofood imports. Decomposing the concentration indices into intensive and extensive margins components, we find that the decrease in overall concentration indices results from two diverging trends: the pattern of...

This paper explores the evolution of OECD imports over time and as a function of income levels, measuring the concentration of those imports across origin countries at the product level. We find evidence of diversification followed, in the very last years of the sample period (post-2000), by a...

This article explores the link between gravity and welfare frameworks for measuring the impact of non-tariff measures. First, an analytical approach suggests how to combine a gravity equation with a partial equilibrium model to determine the welfare impact of nontariff measures. Second, an...

The paper explores the evolution of export diversification patterns along the economic development path. Using a large database with 156 countries over 19 years at the HS6 level of disaggregation (4’991 product lines) we look for action at the “intensive” and “extensive” margins...

Guided by empirical evidence we consider firms heterogeneity in terms of factor intensity. We show that Heckscher-Ohlin comparative advantage and firm-level relative factor-intensity interact to jointly explain the observed differences in relative sales. Firms whose rela- tive factor-intensity...