This paper analyses and quantifies the effects of trade liberalisation and skill-biased technical change, both exogenous and trade-induced, on the skill premium and real wages of unskilled and skilled workers in the Mexican manufacturing sector, using industry- and firm-level data for 1984-1990...

The causes of the USA's exceptional economic performance are investigated by comparing American wages and prices with wages and prices in Great Britain, Egypt, and India.  Habakkuk's views on the causes of American industrial pre-eminence are reassessed.  While the USA had abundant natural...

We provide cogent evidence for the causal pro-trade effect of migrants and in doing so establish an important link between migrant networks and long-run economic development.  To this end, we exploit a unique event in human history, the exodus of the Vietnamese Boat People to the US.  This...

We show that the countries of the former Austro-Hungarian monarchy trade significantly more with one another in the aftermath of the collapse of the Iron Curtain than predicted by a standard gravity model.  This trade surplus declines linearly and monotonically over time.  We argue that these...

While political instability is broadly believed to be bad for economic growth, firm performance and foreign direct investment, few studies convincingly identify the causal impact of conflict on firms and export performance.  In this paper, we analyze the impact of the Kenyan post-election...

Concern is growing regarding the poverty impacts of trade liberalization. The strong general equilibrium effects of trade liberalization can only be properly analysed in a CGE model. However, the aggregate nature of CGE models is not suited to detailed poverty analysis. We bridge this gap by...

Interconnections among financial institutions create potential channels for contagionand amplification of shocks to the financial system. Contagion occurs when a shock tothe assets of a single firm causes other firms to default through the network of obligations.We say that contagion is weak if...

The paper analyses the effects of the 1990 Brazilian trade liberalization on the total factor productivity, market share and profits of a sample of 349 large manufacturing firms. A panel data production function analysis.

Abstract. This paper studies the distributional impact of commodity price shocks over the both the short and very long run. Using a GARCH model, we find that Australia experienced more volatility than many commodity exporting developing countries over the periods 1865- 1940 and 1960-2007. A...

This paper examines the trade and trade-induced welfare effects of high oil prices. Using a gravity model of trade we find that the distance elasticity of trade signif- icantly increases with the oil price. This suggests that high oil prices make trade less global. We estimate that an increase...