Are financial constraints preventing firms from importing capital goods? Sourcing capital goods from foreign countries is costly and requires internal or external financial resources. A simple model of foreign technology adoption shows that credit constraints act as a barrier to importing...

This paper studies the impact of input-trade liberalization on firms' decision to upgrade foreign technology embodied in imported capital goods. The empirical analysis is motivated by a simple theoretical framework of endogenous technology adoption, heterogeneous firms and imported inputs. The...

We study the effect of worker bargaining power on global firms' boundaries. Our theory posits that outsourcing weakens the workers' bargaining position by limiting the revenues subject to worker extraction. Furthermore, when capital is relationship-specific, outsourcing reduces the firm's...

We examine the supply-side characteristics - unskilled labor, imported input intensity, dependence on inputs from China, production complexity - that determine different potential vulnerabilities of traded products to the COVID-19 pandemic. Relying on monthly exports at the product level by all...

Inequalities between workers of different skills have been growing in the era of globalization. Firms’ internationalization mode has an impact on job stability. Exporting firms are not only exposed to different foreign shocks, they also pay skill-intensive fixed costs to serve foreign markets....