A consequence of melting Arctic ice caps is the commercial viability of the Northern Sea Route, connecting North-East Asia with North-Western Europe. This will represent a sizeable reduction in shipping distances and a decrease in the average transportation days by around one-third compared to...

Combining employment data with the British Skill Survey (BSS) –which has comparable within-occupation task data for three waves: 1997, 2001 and 2006– we analyse employment changes between occupations (extensive margin) and within occupations (intensive margin). First, we find...

This CPB Discussion Paper proposes indicators to assess government debt sustainability. Sustainable government finances can be achieved via three main channels: fiscal responses, economic growth and financial repression. The fiscal response provides information on the long-term country specific...

The increasing importance of global supply chains has prompted the use of analytical tools based on trade in value added – instead of traditional measures in gross value. We extend this analytical framework to create indicators that identify hubs and spokes in international supply...

Recent trade-in-tasks models suggest that relative low-skill wages may increase when low-skill tasks are offshored. However, using extensive numerical simulations of these models we find that wage inequality is increasing for almost all endowment combinations when we use a broad range of...

We investigate the trade-off between employment and labour productivity in a panel of OECD countries in 1970-2003. The endogeneity of employment is shown to matter crucially for assessing its effect on productivity. Estimating a structural model with 3SLS, where employment depends on...

We reassess the empirical relevance of the Kuznets Curve with a new inequality dataset. Using panel data estimations that account for the heterogeneity of inequality observations, we test for both the unconditional and the conditional hypothesis that includes alternative inequality determinants....

In services, the activities of foreign affiliates often exceed the value of cross-border trade. A complete analysis of services liberalisation therefore requires the modelling of FDI. This paper presents the treatment of FDI in our CGE model WorldScan based on the ideas of Petri (1997) and...

Using a GTAP CGE application, we assess the main economic results of CAFTA for Central America (CA). Currently, Central America enjoys preferential access to the US market through the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI). CAFTA will consolidate and augment these concessions. Meanwhile, the...

Using the CGE model WorldScan, we assess the benefits for the EU member states of jointly reaching four of the Lisbon targets (i.e. 70% employment, skills upgrades, increased R&D expenditures and administrative burden reductions of 25%), compared with the alternative when each country...