This paper combines personnel records of the U.S. federal government with census data to study how shocks to the gender composition of a large organization can persistently shift gender norms. Exploiting city-by-department variation in the sudden expansion of female clerical employment driven by...

To engage with the large literature on the economic effects of slavery, we use antebellum census data to test for statistical differences at the 1860 free-slave border. We find evidence of lower population density, less intensive land use, and lower farm values on the slave side. Half of the...

This paper analyzes frameworks for the design of the rules for international trading, assuming that it is possible to have some rule of law. In the Arrow-Debreu benchmark, where there is no economic power and political power is seemingly irrelevant, there is no need for trade agreements - free...

Yes. We state closed-form expressions for steady state gains from trade that apply in a class of dynamic trade models that includes dynamic versions of the Krugman (1980), Melitz (2003), and customer capital (e.g., Arkolakis, 2010) models. The gains are a function of the domestic trade share and...

We analyze international trade and health policy coordination during a pandemic by developing a two-economy, two-sector trade model integrated into a micro-founded SIR model of infection dynamics. Disease transmission intensity can differ by goods (manufactured versus services and domestic...