In the standard heterogeneous firm model of Hopenhayn (1992) and Melitz (2003), more efficient firms export and trade liberalization leads to higher average efficiency among firms. In data for Columbian plants 1981–1991, we see that the average level of productivity among exporters is...

Quantifying the gains from international trade is an area of research that has been widely studied using a variety of trade models. At the same time, it has been shown that non-homotheticities are useful for matching the systematic patterns of trade present in disaggregated trade data. We bring...

We develop a general equilibrium model with a detailed structure of government expenditures and revenues, calibrate it to the Greek and German economies, and use it to study the link between fiscal discipline and defaults. We show that even if the Greek government had entered the Great Recession...

We measure gains from trade in multi-sector economies with non-homothetic preferences where changes in trade costs generate reallocation of expenditure across sectors. We show how to measure the trade elasticity and how it relates to welfare. In this environment, the trade elasticity now varies...

We study the impact of trade on a country catching up to the industrial leader. We calibrate our dynamic, two-country model to Spain and UK from 1850 to 2000, accounting for the inter-war trade collapse (IWTC) and the subsequent catch up by Spain. In our model, the effects of trade disruptions...

The neoclassical growth model (NGM), which is widely used to study macroeconomic phenomena, has a constant labor share built in. However, several recent studies show that the labor share has been declining since at least the 1980s. This calls into question whether the NGM should still be used as...

Atkinson, Piketty, and Saez [2011] find a post-1979 surge in taxfiler top income shares in “English speaking countries” (surge countries) but not in “continental European countries and Japan” (no-surge countries). We find the puzzle that Comtrade import-to-GDP ratios and...