In this paper we investigate the determinants of the dramatic increase in services tradability focusing on the extensive margin of the phenomenon. We use balance sheet and firm-level service trade information over the period 1995-2005 provided by the National Bank of Belgium and we merge it with...

We study the role of contract enforcement in shaping the dynamics of international trade at the firm level. We develop a theoretical model to describe how agents build reputations to overcome the problems created by weak enforcement of international contracts. We find that, all else equal,...

We develop a new econometric framework that simultaneously allows recovering heterogeneity in demand, TFP and markups across firms while leaving the correlation among the three unrestricted. We do this by systematically exploiting assumptions that are implicit in previous firm-level productivity...

Equilibria and optima generally differ in imperfectly competitive markets. While this is well understood theoretically, it is unclear how large the welfare distortions are in the aggregate economy. Do they matter quantitatively? To answer this question, we develop a multi-sector monopolistic...

Recent theoretical models predict gains from international trade coming from intra-industryreallocations, due to a firm selection effect. In this paper we answer two related questions. First, whatis the magnitude of this selection effect, and how does it compare to that of intra-national trade...

We distill the main insights from recent trade models on firms' responses toglobalization. Our primary aim is to assess the economic impact and the welfareimplications of the resulting reallocation of resources across frims and countries. In sodoing, we bring theory into life through the...

We develop a new general equilibrium model of trade with heterogeneous firms, variable demand elasticities and endogenously determined wages. Trade integration favors wage convergence, intensifies competition, and forces the least efficient firms to leave the market, thereby affecting aggregate...

We develop a new general equilibrium model of monopolistic competition with heterogeneous firms, variable demand elasticity and multiple asymmetric regions, in which trade integration induces wage and productivity changes. Using Canada-US interregional trade data, we structurally estimate a...