Does "infant industry" preferential access durably boost export performance? This paper exploits significant trade policy changes in the United States (US) to address this question. The expansion of Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) products for less developed countries in 1997 and the...

This paper examines how providing better information to customs inspectors and monitoring their actions affects tax revenue and fraud detection in Madagascar. First, an instrumental variables strategy is used to show that transaction-specific, third-party valuation advice on a subset of...

To identify transactions at risk of tariff evasion, this paper matches export transaction data from France with import transaction data from Madagascar using container identifiers. Reporting discrepancies between exporters and importers are prevalent but small, with over two-fifths of importers...

This paper studies how learning from neighboring firms affects new exporters' performance and dynamics. We develop a statistical decision model in which a firm updates its prior belief about demand of a foreign market based on the number of neighbors currently selling there, the level and...

The age at which children leave the parental home differs considerably across countries. We present a theoretical model predicting that higher job security of parents and lower job security of children may delay emancipation. We then provide aggregate evidence which supports this hypothesis for...

Due to conventional gender norms, women are more likely to be in charge of childcare than men. From an employer's perspective, in their fertile age they are also at "risk" of pregnancy. Both factors potentially affect hiring practices of firms. We conduct a largescale correspondence test in...

The past decades witnessed big changes in international trade with the rise of global value chains. Some countries, such as China, Poland, and Vietnam rode the tide, while other countries, many in the Africa region, faltered. This paper studies the determinants of participation in global value...

This paper examines the impact of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic on China’s trade. Using quarterly transaction-level trade data of all Chinese firms, we find that firms in regions with local transmission of SARS experienced lower import and export growth at both the...

This paper studies foreign direct investment (FDI) spillovers on gender labor market practices of domestic firms, based on a unique firm-to-firm dataset of Bangladesh's textiles and garment sectors. We look at the female employment of domestic firms that are directly and indirectly related to...

We study how firms respond to import competition by increasing the speed of trade. We use data on all Portuguese textile and clothing exporters' monthly transactions and exploit the exogenous increase in competition following the removal of Multi-Fibre Arrangement (MFA) quotas on Chinese...