This paper investigates the effects on firms' occupational structure of shocks induced by the introduction of Technical Barriers to Trade (TBTs) in importing countries. We rely on the Specific Trade Concern (STC) data released by the WTO to identify trade-restrictive TBT measures, combined with...

We show that in successful episodes of export market entry, there are statistically and economically significant post-entry dynamics of quantities, but no post-entry dynamics of markups. This suggests that shifts in demand play an important role in successful entry, but that firms do not use...

Entrepôts are hubs that facilitate trade between various origins and destinations. We study the role these hubs, and the networks they form, play in international trade. Using novel data, we trace the paths of containerized goods entering the United States. We show that the majority of trade is...

Trade costs are crucial in new economic geography (NEG) models. The unavailability of actual trade costs data requires the approximation of trade costs. Most NEG studies do not deal with the ramifications of the particular trade costs specification used. This paper shows that the specification...

What happens when employers would like to screen their employees but only observe a subset of output? We specify a model in which heterogeneous employees respond by producing more of the observed output at the expense of the unobserved output. Though this substitution distorts output in the...

Experimental and empirical findings suggest that non-pecuniary motivations play a significant role as determinants of taxpayers’ decision to comply with the tax authority and shape their perceptions and assessment of the tax code. By contrast, the canonical optimal income taxation model...

Advantageous (or propitious) selection occurs when an increase in the premium of an insurance contract induces high-cost agents to quit, thereby reducing the average cost among remaining buyers. Hemenway (1990) and many subsequent contributions motivate its advent by differences in risk-aversion...