The authors examine the effect of trade on productivity growth using data from nine manufacturing industries across 12 OECD countries over the period 1978-97. Because causality between productivity growth and trade share runs both ways, geographical characteristics of countries are used to...

This study uses survey data collected from five large cities in China to describe and decompose the earnings difference between female and male workers. The results indicate that the main source of lower earnings for females lies in unequal pay within sectors, and that the earnings gap due to...

The author explains the "gender gap" as a Nash equilibrium of a game with incomplete information about women's work at home and in the marketplace. Expectations about women's lower wages leads to the overutilization of women in the household, and this, in turn, leads to lower productivity and...

The author finds evidence of a downward-sloping labor supply curve for urban areas in Peru from cross-sectional household data for 2002 and pooled data for available years from 1985 to 2000. Individuals respond to lower hourly earnings with an increase in the quantity supplied of work hours....

The conventional Heckscher-Ohlin model of trade predicts an equalizing effect of trade on wages in developing countries abundant in less-skilled labor. Contrary to these predictions, skill premiums and skill demand increased in Mexico following trade liberalization. "New" trade theories have...

The authors analyze how the design of the central bank interacts with the implementation of structural reforms in a monetary union. They show that the first-best is achieved when the common central bank is collectively designed, irrespective of whether or not reforms are cooperatively...

The authors estimate gravity models using a large panel of bilateral trade flows across 61 countries between 1980 and 2003, which are applied as a benchmark for the integration of Central and South Eastern European countries with the euro area. They show that a careful examination of the fixed...

The authors test hysteresis versus the natural rate hypothesis in unemployment using panel data for transition countries covering the period 1991:1-2003:11. The advantages of the stationarity tests applied is that they exploit the cross-section variations of the series and, additionally, allow...

Within the mechanism of endogenous growth, this paper empirically investigates the impact of financial capital on economic growth for a panel of 60 developing countries, through the channel of domestic capital formation. By estimating the model for different income groups, it is found that while...

The authors present a model of regional catching-up and development without scale effects. Regional growth is driven by technological imitation which is determined by positive externalities from international trade, the regions' geography, and regional institutions. For the two regions...