The paper develops a model of proportionate growth to describe the dynamics of the network of international trade flows. We show that a large number of the empirical regularities characterizing international trade - such as the fraction of zero trade flows across pairs of countries, the positive...

One criticism of the gravity model of international trade is that it takes no account of comparative advantage. This critique is particularly important when the gravity model is considered for policy applications such as identifying priority markets for trade promotion programs. For example, the...

This policy note summarises the main findings of our recent research on the effects of labour and corporate taxation on international trade, and discusses their policy implications. The first major finding is that labour taxes do not seem to affect imports, while their effect on exports is...

What insights can be gained from bringing the theory of the firm to the global economy? I discuss several new features of the world economy that can be explained by incorporating the theory of the firm into the theory of international trade. Among the new features I discuss are the move to...

Firms play a critical role in the global economy. In this paper, we survey the behavior of firms in the international economy, both in theory and in the data. We first summarize the key empirical facts that motivate the study of firms in trade. Then, we detail recent theoretical developments on...

In this paper, we present for the first time a qualitative and quantitative comparison between trade in services and trade in goods at firm level for the same country. We focus first on static features of trade such as participation rates, firms' characteristics, heterogeneity, concentration and...

Trade asymmetry is a well-known fact and there are extensive reports and literature about the causes for those asymmetries. There is also a recognised effort made by trade statisticians to mitigate trade asymmetry over time. Notwithstanding the positive achievements that have been made so far,...

With global specialization and trade, countries make directly but also indirectly use of the environment via traded goods. Based on the theory of comparative advantages, the Heckscher-Ohlin-Vanek approach, we are using the Ecological Footprint as a broad measure of environmental use because its...

A growing body of literature in the field of international trade highlights the increasing importance of the time delays associated with transporting goods over long distances and the differing effect that such delays have on traded goods that exhibit diverse degrees of time-sensitivity. This...

In 2016, the world became aware of the Chinese Communist Party’s repressive campaign against the Muslim Uyghur populace of China’s far west Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, under which upwards of one million Uyghurs have been detained in reeducation and forced labor camps. This paper...