This article examines three competing hypotheses and their ability to explain events in international financial markets during the 1980s. The rival hypotheses view the trade deficit as caused alternatively by large U.S. budget deficits, by tight U.S. monetary policy, or by real shocks to...

Trade theorists have come to understand that their theory is ambiguous on the question: Are trade and factor flows substitutes? While this sounds like an open invitation for empirical research, hardly any serious econometric work has appeared in the literature. This paper uses history to fill...