Demand for less skilled workers decreased dramatically in the US and other developed countries over the past two decades. We argue that pervasive skill biased technological change rather than increased trade with the developing world is the principal culprit.

This paper examines whether historical ealth distributions can affect long run output and distribution despite rational saving behavior and absence of any technological nonconvexities or externalities. We consider a model of equilibrium short period financial contracts, where poor agents face...

This paper explores the gains to monetary union. We consider a two-country overlapping generations model. Agents work when young and have random tastes over the composition (domestic vs. foreign goods) of old age consumption. In equilibrium, governments require that local currncy be used for...

This paper presents the first systematic comparison of job stability for developing and developed countries, and begins to analyze why long-lasting jobs are less prevalent in developing countries. It compares both cross-section distributions of current job tenure and estimates of job retention...

We develop a Ricardian model to explore the role of trade in spreading the benefits of innovation.

Countries differ in their absolute and relative productivities in doing research across different technologies. They also differ in their propensity to adopt different technologies from abroad. Moreover, technologies may vary in their international mobility. We make use of new data on...

We analyse the behaviour of foreign banks who sequentially provide credit to finance projects in an emerging market. The foreign banks are exposed to both micro-economic risks and the macro-economic risk of a currency crisis, and there are no bailout guarantees.

We develop a framework for estimating the optimal expenditure of agents subject to unobserved liquidity constraints. OUr framework allows us to estimate credit ceilings as well as preference parameters. We apply the framework to data on net resource transfers from private lenders to twenty-nine...