This paper investigates whether the arrival of managers with export experience, i.e. experience acquired through participation in the export activity of previous employers, is related to firms' international trade status and to what extent this relationship is of a causal nature. We construct a...

When trade costs are of the iceberg type (Samuelson 1952) and markups are independent of trade costs, relative prices across markets are distorted, but relative prices within markets are not. When trade costs depart from the analytically convenient iceberg type, distortion will also occur within...

In this paper we ask why the gravity model of international trade also work well for foreign direct investment (FDI) flows or multinational production (MP). We propose a model of trade and horizontal FDI, where the subsidiary is allowed to source inputs from the headquarters. Under certain...

We study the role of contract enforcement in shaping the dynamics of international trade at the firm level. We develop a theoretical model to describe how agents build reputations to overcome the problems created by weak enforcement of international contracts. We find that, all else equal,...

Using micro data for Belgium we investigate the relationship between occupational tasks changes and the rise of service trade. We focus the analysis on the extensive margin and look at the heterogeneous proliferation of firms involved in exports and imports of services across sectors...

We develop a new general equilibrium model of monopolistic competition with heterogeneous firms, variable demand elasticity and multiple asymmetric regions, in which trade integration induces wage and productivity changes. Using Canada-US interregional trade data, we structurally estimate a...

In models with heterogeneous firms trade integration has a positive impact on aggregate productivity through the selection of the best firms as import competition drives the least productive ones out of the market. To quantify the impact of firm selection on productivity, we calibrate and...

Using a matched employer-employee dataset on Italy we look at the spatial distribution of wages among provinces. We find evidence of both urbanization and market potential externalities, with the second one being more relevant. However, spatial sorting of skills is at work and explains a great...

Using a data set of highly cited researchers in all fields of science, we show that the gap in scientific performance between Europe, especially continental Europe, and the USA is large. We model the number of highly cited researchers in a sample of countries as a function of physical and human...

We distill the main insights from recent trade models on firms' responses to globalisation. Our primary aim is to assess the economic impact and the welfare implications of the resulting reallocation of resources across firms and countries. In so doing, we bring theory into life through the...