This paper models the relationship between countries' distance from global economic activity, endogenous investments in education, and economic development. Firms in remote locations pay greater trade costs on both exports and intermediate imports, reducing the amount of value added left to...

In this paper we study the role of the transportation sector in world trade. We build a spatial model that centers on the interaction of the market for (oceanic) transportation services and the market for world trade in goods. The model delivers equilibrium trade flows, as well as equilibrium...

We leverage detailed data on vessel movements and shipping contracts to shed new light on world trade costs and trade flows. The data reveal new facts about shipping patterns, and motivate us to build a framework modeling the behavior of exporters and ships. Our framework has two novel features:...

This paper analyzes the effect of globalization (lower trade costs) on production and trade patterns if firms are vertically linked, stages of production differ in labor-factors intensity and countries differ in labor-factors prices. In order to reflect the Continental Europe experience,...

We develop a multi-country Dixit-Stiglitz trade model and analyze how industry location and welfare respond to changes in: (i) transport frictions (e.g., infrastructure, transportation technology); and (ii) non-transport frictions (e.g., tariffs, standards and regulations). We show that changes...

In this paper, we introduce a distinction between interregional and intraregional transportation costs, in a footloose capital model. This allows assessing more precisely the effects of different types of transport policies, on the spatial distribution of activities. From a normative point of...

This paper models the relationship between countries' distance from global economic activity, endogenous investments in education, and economic development. Firms in remote locations pay greater trade costs on both exports and intermediate imports, reducing the amount of value added left to...

We investigate where cities are located in a spatial economy and why they tend to get 'locked-in' at particular sites. Building on Fujita and Krugman (1995) we show that geography and/or transportation technology must exhibit some 'non-smoothness' for cities to possibly become 'locked-in' in...