Using product-level data on exports from different cities within China, this paper investigates the contributing factors to the rising export sophistication. [WP no. 226].

They are providing systematic evidence that intermediaries play an important role in facilitating trade using a firm-level the census of China's exports. Intermediaries account for around 20% of China's exports in 2005. This implies that many firms engage in trade without directly exporting...

Why it is so hard to find a robust effect of aid on the long-term growth of poor countries, even those with good policies. A possible offset to the beneficial effects of aid is examined using a methodology that exploits both cross-country and within-country variation.

The authors examine the effects of aid on the growth of manufacturing using a methodology that exploits the variation within countries and across manufacturing sectors and that corrects for possible reverse causality. They find that aid inflows have systematic adverse effects on a...

This paper documents an unusual and possibly significant phenomenon: the export of skills, embodied in goods, services or capital from poorer to richer countries. A set of stylized facts is presented. Using a measure which combines the sophistication of a country’s exports with the...

The current perspective on the flow of people is almost exclusively focused on permanent migration from poorer to richer countries and on immigration policies in industrial countries. This perspective needs to cede to a broader one that challenges the basic conception of physical rootedness in...