If trade barriers are managed by inefficient institutions, trade liberalization can lead to greater-than-expected gains. We examine Chinese textile and clothing exports before and after the removal of externally imposed quotas. Both the surge in export volumes and the decline in prices after the...

Firms’ decisions about which goods to produce are often made at a more disaggregate level than the data observed by empirical researchers. When products differ according to production technique or the way in which they enter demand, this data aggregation problem introduces a bias into standard...

This Paper presents a model of international trade that features heterogeneous firms, relative endowment differences across countries, and consumer taste for variety. The Paper demonstrates that firm reactions to trade liberalization generate endogenous Ricardian productivity responses at the...

This Paper develops a model of endogenous product selection by firms. The theory is motivated by new evidence we present on the importance of product switching by US manufacturers. Two-thirds of continuing firms change their product mix every five years, and product switches involve more than...

We develop a methodology for identifying departures from relative factor price equality across regions that is valid under general assumptions about production, markets and factors. Application of this methodology to the United States reveals substantial and increasing deviations in relative...

Do workers in countries located far from global economic activity have lower incentives to accumulate human capital than workers near the centre? This Paper models the relationship between countries’ distance from global economic activity, endogenous investments in education, and economic...

Despite the fact that importing and exporting are extremely rare firm activities, economists generally devote little attention to the role of firms when discussing international trade. This paper summarizes key differences between trading and non-trading firms, demonstrates how these differences...

Relative wages vary considerably across regions of the United Kingdom, with skill-abundant regions exhibiting lower skill premia than skill-scarce regions. This Paper shows that the location of economic activity is correlated with the variation in relative wages. UK regions with low skill premia...

This paper examines the determinants of intra-firm trade in U.S. imports using detailed country-product data. We create a new measure of product contractibility based on the degree of intermediation in international trade for the product. We find important roles for the interaction of country...

International trade models typically assume that producers in one country trade directly with final consumers in another. In the real world, of course, trade can involve long chains of potentially independent actors who move goods through wholesale and retail distribution networks. These...