This paper shows that an income effect can drive expenditure switching between domestic and foreign goods. We use a unique Latvian scanner-level dataset for food and beverages, covering the 2008-09 financial crisis, to study (i) relative price movements, and (ii) expenditure switching between...

We present a dynamic comparative advantage model in which moderate reductions in import tariffs can generate sizable increases in trade volumes over time. A fall in import tariffs has two effects on the volume of trade. First, for given factor endowments, it raises the degree of specialization...

This paper looks at Austria's pattern of development and its lessons for Eastern Europe. Austria's development path is characterized by three features. In the post-war era Austria was among the countries with the fastest convergence rate. At the same time Austria's movement up the technological...

Development accounting exercises based on an aggregate production function find technology is biased in favour of a country's abundant production factors. We provide an explanation to this finding based on the Heckscher-Ohlin model. Countries trade and specialize in the industries that use...

We study the changing international transmission of US financial shocks over the period 1971-2009. Financial shocks are defined as unexpected changes of a financial conditions index (FCI), recently developed by Hatzius et al. (2010), for the US. We use a time-varying factor-augmented VAR to...

This paper tests whether trade in new goods is partially responsible for the pro-trade effects of the euro and provides a measure of the size of the effect. It works with a very large data set (about 16 million observations) covering twenty countries at the most disaggregated level of trade data...

The distributional effects of the minimum wage are analysed in a model where skilled and unskilled labour enter the production function. It is argued that distributional goals are best achieved by letting the labour market clear and achieving redistribution through taxes and transfers.

It is well known that the neoclassical model does not generate comovement among macroeconomic aggregates in response to news about future total factor productivity. We show that this problem is generally more severe in open economy versions of the neoclassical model. We present an open economy...

We develop an analytically tractable two-country model that marries a full account of global macroeconomic dynamics to a supply framework based on monopolistic competition and sticky nominal prices. The model offers simple and intuitive predictions about exchange rates and current accounts that...

This paper uses micro-data on balance sheets, trade, and the nationality of ownership of firms in France to investigate the effect of foreign multinationals on business cycle comovement. We first show that foreign affiliates, which represent a tiny fraction of all firms, are responsible for a...