The realization of many of the United Nations (UN) sustainable development goals (SDGs) depends on bolstering the performance of service sectors and improving access to specific services in developing countries. We show that prevailing services, trade, and investment policies affect access to...

We look at how improving roads can affect jobs and structural transformation. We use a novel geocoded dataset covering the universe of Ethiopian roads and match this information with individual data to identify the effects of improvements in road infrastructure on the creation, quality, and...

Why do governments sign services trade agreements? This paper focuses on the role of international agreements in the context of trade in services when services are used as intermediate inputs in downstream industries. Compared to goods, services inputs are mostly non-tradable and complementary...

This paper studies bilateral cultural preferences as an asymmetric dimension of cultural proximity and estimates their effect on greenfield foreign direct investment (FDI). We derive a gravity equation of FDI and test simultaneously the impact of both (a) the preferences of investing countries...

Why do governments sign services trade agreements? This paper focuses on the role of international agreements in the context of trade in services when services are used as intermediate inputs in downstream industries. Compared to goods, services inputs are mostly non-tradable and complementary...

The paper investigates the relationship between services trade performance and employment characteristics in Italian firms. Our analysis is at the micro level and descriptive in nature. We merge micro data on services trade transactions with employment and wage variables at the level of the...

Beginning in the early 1990s, non-state actors have taken over a wide range of governance functions that used to be the prerogative of states and international organizations. In the field of International Relations and related disciplines, this has intensified debates about a lack of...

This paper investigates the role of cultural proximity (CP) on greenfield foreign direct investment (FDI). We build a conceptual framework that explicitly accounts for the asymmetric dimensions in the cultural relationship between two countries, and single out a symmetric element (similarity)...