While trade integration is often regarded as a principal determinant of economic growth, the empirical evidence for a causal linkage between trade and growth is ambiguous. This paper argues that the effect of trade in dynamic panel estimations depends crucially on the specification of trade....

We offer a duality-based methodology for incorporating multi-sector effects of international trade into open economy macroeconomic models, developing the concepts of the dynamic factor price equalization set and the integrated intertemporal equilibrium. Under this approach, the aggregate...

The role of regulatory quality as one of the so-called deep determinants of growth has emerged as an important issue in economic research in the past 20 years. The positive or negative growth effects of a countryś regulatory framework are amplified by economic integration, which makes factors...

The paper shows that the relationship between GDP per capita and levels of specialization can be predicted differently depending on whether the intensive or the extensive margin is considered. It shows that at the extensive margin countries continuously diversify their exports and that...

According to recent UN projections more than 50 percent of the growth in world population over the next half century will be due to population growth in Africa. Given this, any policy that influences African demography will have a significant impact on the world distribution of income. In this...

This paper evaluates the global welfare impact of China's trade integration and technological change in a quantitative Ricardian-Heckscher-Ohlin model implemented on 75 countries. We simulate two alternative productivity growth scenarios: a "balanced" one in which China's productivity grows at...

This work shows the asymmetric effect of the reduction in transportation costs across different sectors in the process of the Great Divergence. Specifically, the analysis indicates that reductions in transportation costs of industrial goods enhance convergence of the growth rates of trading...

We estimate productivities at the sector level for 72 countries and 5 decades, and examine how they evolve over time in both developed and developing countries. In both country groups, comparative advantage has become weaker: productivity grew systematically faster in sectors that were initially...

Does trade improve institutions and contribute to long run growth? I develop a theory of trade, in which trade liberalization provides incentive to change institutions in two ways. On the one hand, trade leads to specialization according to comparative advantage, expanding the industries that do...

The current global-imbalance literature (which explains why capital flows from poor to rich countries) is unable to explain China's foreign asset positions because capital cannot flow out of China under capital controls. Hence, this literature has not succeeded in explaining China's large and...