The Heckscher-Ohlin-Vanek (HOV) theorem, which predicts that countries will export products that are made from factors in great supply, performs poorly. However, deviations from HOV follow pronounced patterns. Trade is missing relative to its HOV prediction. Also, rich countries appear scarce in...

Do scale economies help to explain international trade flows? Using a large database on output, trade flows, and factor endowments, we find that allowing for the presence of increasing returns to scale in production significantly increases our ability to predict international trade flows. In...

The Canada-U. S. Free Trade Agreement provides a unique window onto the effects of a reciprocal trade agreement on an industrialized economy (Canada). For industries that experienced the deepest Canadian tariff cuts, the contraction of low-productivity plants reduced employment by 12 percent...

We study the effect of U.S. food aid on conflict in recipient countries. Our analysis exploits time variation in food aid shipments due to changes in U.S. wheat production and cross-sectional variation in a country's tendency to receive any U.S. food aid. According to our estimates, an increase...

We show that current differences in trust levels within Africa can be traced back to the transatlantic and Indian Ocean slave trades. Combining contemporary individual-level survey data with historical data on slave shipments by ethnic group, we find that individuals whose ancestors were heavily...

This paper provides evidence that the form of agriculture traditionally practiced--intensive plough agriculture versus shifting hoe agriculture--affected historic norms and preferences about fertility, and that these norms persist, affecting observed fertility around the world today.

We provide evidence that increased political influence, arising from CIA interventions during the Cold War, was used to create a larger foreign market for American products. Following CIA interventions, imports from the US increased dramatically, while total exports to the US were unaffected....