According to the traditional theory of international trade, a gradual opening of trade teamed with migration would make initially asymmetric regions more symmetric. In stark contrast, the new economic geography models show that factor mobility and opening may eventually exaggerates initial...

Analyses that examine the role of international standards on export performance has been concentrated on quality certifications. Very little is known about the impact of environmental certifications on exports. In this paper we employ firm-level data from Ecuador to assess the impact of the ISO...

Popular empirical strategies that examine the labor impacts of migrants, like the skill-cell approach, are frequently used to measure the effects of immigrants from a particular skill group on native-born workers with similar skills. I use an augmented version of the skill-cell approach to...

While there is a large body of literature evaluating how active labor-market policies such as training impact worker outcomes, relatively few studies examine how such policies impact workers who are displaced by trade. The few studies on training and trade-related labor adjustment focus on the...

While there is a large body of literature evaluating how active labor-market policies such as training impact worker outcomes, relatively few studies examine how such policies impact workers who are displaced by trade. The few studies on training and trade-related labor adjustment focus on the...

We analyze how local labor markets in Mexico adjusted in response to an increase in Chinese import competition between 1998 and 2013. We exploit the spatial variation in import exposure arising from initial differences in industry specialization. We found that the adjustment took various forms:...

We study the impact of import competition on Mexican firm outcomes between 2003 and 2013 by exploiting variation in import penetration across industries. Focusing on the increase in import competition from China that Mexico experienced during this period, we find that the trade shock induced a...

Why are growth rates in Latin America so disappointing? This book reviews the results of an ambitious research project to determine the binding constraints to growth, that is, the barrier whose removal would yield the greatest benefit in terms of growth. Included are case studies from seven...