During the last two decades new research has greatly advanced our understanding of the structure of world trade. This article reviews the empirical literature that grew out of this effort. I emphasize the interplay between theory and empirical research that was an important driving force behind...

We investigate the impact of international outsourcing on productivity using plant level data for Irish manufacturing. Specifically, we distinguish the effect of outsourcing of materials from services inputs. Moreover, we examine whether the impact on productivity is different for plants being...

There are two contrasting views of pre-19th century trade and globalization. First there are the world history scholars like Andre Gunder Frank who attach globalization ‘big bang' significance to the dates 1492 (Christopher Columbus stumbles on America in search of spices) and 1498 (Vasco da...

This paper explores to what extent the magnitude and speed of the contagion effects that materialized in East Asia in the second half of 1997 may have had "real" underpinnings, in the sense that the pattern of production, consumption and trade increased the vulnerability of East Asian countries...

Globalization has been identified by many experts as a new way firms organize their activities and also as the emergence of talent as the new stakeholder in the firm. This Paper examines the role of trade integration for the changing nature of the corporation. International trade leads to a...

We analyse a very rich and unique panel database which provides information on exports at the firm-product level. A stylised fact in the data is that many firms add as well as drop products from the export mix in any given year. Motivated by recent theory we investigate what determines the...

In a cross section of OECD countries we replace the macroeconomic production function by a production possibility frontier, TFP being the composite effect of efficiency scores and possibility frontier changes. We consider, for the periods 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, one output: GDP per worker; three...

In this paper, I have examined whether exporters benefit by exporting more, and also whether the productivity benefits from exporting more are heterogeneous across export destinations. I have conducted my own data collection field work and built a unique firm-level panel database of Czech...

International competitiveness receives much attention nowadays, but until recently its assessment has been heavily based on goods trade statistics. This paper addresses the need for competitiveness indicators that cover services trade and sets out initial proposals for developing a multilevel...

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