The paper extends the literature on the political economy of labour market institutions by developing a framework in which owners of capital can benefit from both greater labour market flexibility and better rule of law. Their choice of location of manufacturing centres can, therefore, by...

Motivated by growth models based on the variety of capital goods, recent empirical studies have established links between productivity and several trade-based measures of product variety, carrying the implication that these measures may represent technology. We study this implication by...

The Balassa-Samuelson hypothesis – i.e. that real exchange rates between each pair of countries increase with the tradables sector productivities ratio between these countries, and decrease with their non-tradables sector productivities ratio – has been one of the most prominent frameworks...

The gravity literature has focused on distance, borders and contiguity to measure geography's impact on trade. We add value to this literature in terms of data, method and assessment of effects. First, we expand existing geographical databases by adding topographical features. We supply novel...