We examine the relationship between trade and financial globalization and the rise in inequality in most countries in recent decades. We find technological progress as having a greater impact than globalization on inequality. The limited overall impact of globalization reflects two offsetting...

The paper extends the work of Deaton (2021) by exploring the period of post-crisis recovery in 2021-2024. The paper documents per-capita income divergence during the period of post-shock recovery, with countries at the bottom of the income distribution falling significantly behind. Findings...

The current wave of technological revolution is changing the way policies work. This paper examines the growth and distributional implications of three policies when "robot'' capital (a broad definition of robots, Artificial Intelligence, computers, big data, digitalization, networks, sensors...

This paper constructs an efficiency-adjusted public capital stock series and re-examines the public capital and growth relationship for 52 developing countries. The results show that public capital is a significant contributor to economic growth. Although the estimated coefficient for the income...

The notable rebound of U.S. manufacturing activity following the Great Recession has raised the question of whether the sector might be experiencing a renaissance. Using panel regressions, we find that a depreciating real exchange rate, an increasing spread in natural gas prices between the...

This paper develops new, far more extensive estimates of export quality, covering 178 countries and hundreds of products over 1962–2010. Quality upgrading is particularly rapid during the early stages of development, with quality convergence largely completed as a country reaches upper...

This dissertation investigates the implications of different methods of identifying exogenous shocks to defense purchases for estimating the macroeconomic effects of shocks to government purchases. Four identification schemes are examined: the narrative approach of Ramey and Shapiro (1997), a...

This dissertation investigates the reasons behind international price dispersion. The first essay, International Price Dispersion and the Direction of Trade, discusses the importance of trade cost as a determinant of international price dispersion. The importance of trade costs in segmenting...

International evidence on growth rates in per capita incomes reveals persistent differences in development patterns among nations, and shows that the world distribution of per capita income is multi-modal with several basins of attraction. This dissertation investigates the factors underlying...