We estimate the effects of major roads and public transit on the growth of major cities in the US between 1980 and 2000. We find that a 10% increase in a city’s stock of roads causes about a 2% increase in its population and employment and a small decrease in its share of poor households over...

We investigate the relationship between interstate highways and highway vehicle kilometers traveled (vkt) in US cities. We find that vkt increases proportionately to highways and identify three important sources for this extra vkt: an increase in driving by current residents; an increase in...

We study the interplay between transportation infrastructure, knowledge flows, and innovation. Exploiting historical data on planned portions of the interstate highway system, railroads, and exploration routes as sources of exogenous variation, we estimate the effect of U.S. interstate highways...

The recent media and political attention on service outsourcing from developed to developing countries gives the impression that outsourcing is exploding. As a result, workers in industrial countries are anxious about job losses. This Paper aims to establish what are the hypes and what are the...

I study the internal organization of production between the parent and the affiliate in the multinational corporation (MNC) and the extent to which it depends on the factor abundance of the destination country of the affiliates relative to the home country. I use a unique South Korean firm-level...

This Paper analyses to which extent domestic institutions affect trade flows. We use two complementary approaches, one focusing on the size of total trade flows and one focusing on bilateral trade patterns (gravity equation). We also control for two other domestic policy variables: trade policy...

This Paper estimates the effect of sovereign debt renegotiation on international trade. Sovereign default may be associated with a subsequent decline in international trade either because creditors want to deter default by debtors, or because trade finance dries up after default. To estimate the...

We work with a panel of bilateral trade flows from 1988 to 2002, exploring the influence of infrastructure, institutional quality, colonial and geographic context, and trade preferences on the pattern of bilateral trade. We are interested in threshold effects, and so emphasize those cases where...

How are the benefits - and costs - of a customs union divided between member countries? Outcomes depend on the comparative advantage of member countries, relative to each other and to the rest of the world. Countries with a comparative advantage between that of their partners and the rest of the...

This paper considers the locational choice of firms in an upstream and a downstream industry. Both industries are imperfectly competitive, with firms subject to increasing returns. There are transport costs between the two locations. Depending on the level of these costs there may be a single...