Wal-Mart, Toys "R" Us, and other large retail chains are often identified with cheap imports. We use data from the Census of Retail Trade and the International Trade Commission over the period 1997-2002 to test whether big chains serve as platforms for imports from LDCs. Using...

Retail chains and imports from developing countries have grown sharply over the past 25 years. Wal-Marts chain, which currently accounts for 10% of U.S. imports from China, grew 10-fold and its sales 90-fold over this period, while U.S. imports from China increased 30-fold. We relate these...

Retail chains and the volume of imports of consumer goods from developing countries have grown sharply over the past 25 years. Wal-Marts sales, which currently account for 15% of U.S. imports of consumer goods from China, grew 90-fold over this period, while U.S. imports from China increased...

This paper documents and explains the recent rise of "big-box" general merchandisers. Data from the Census of Retail Trade for 1977-2007 show that general-merchandise chains grew much faster than specialist retail chains, and that general merchandisers that added the most stores also made the...

We develop an economic model that explains historical data on government corruption in Ming and Qing China. In our model, officials extensive powers result in corrupt income matching lands share in output. We estimate corrupt income to be between 14 to 22 times official income resulting in about...

We study the effect of increases in state minimum wages on the prices of several fast-food items using quarterly city-level data from 1993-2012, a period during much of which the federal minimum wage declined in real value while state-level legislation flourished. For two products, burgers and...