This paper analyzes the exporting behaviour of manufacturing firms located in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region using data from the World Bank's Enterprise Surveys Database. It specifically examines the factors that determine the probability of exporting and the export intensity of...

This paper investigates the feasibility of creating a common-currency union consisting of 16 countries in Southern Africa. We estimate an augmented-gravity model that includes public deficit, public debt, public expenditure, inflation, and the foreign reserves position. We also integrate...

To address security concerns, governments often implement trade barriers and restrictions on the movement of goods and people. These restrictions have negative economic consequences, possibly increasing the supply of political violence. To test this hypothesis, we exploit the restrictions...

We document the recent phenomenon of uphill flows of capital from nonindustrial to industrial countries and analyze whether this pattern of capital flows has hurt growth in nonindustrial economies that export capital. Surprisingly, we find that there is a positive correlation between current...

I examine the effect of immigrant inflows in Europe on natives' individual attitudes towards redistribution and immigration policy over the last decade. Unlike previous studies, I analyze the evolution over time of these two types of attitudes in a joint empirical framework. Using migration data...

This paper examines micro-level channels of how financial development can affect macroeconomic outcomes like the level of income and export intensity. We investigate theoretically and empirically how financial constraints affect a firm's innovation and export activities, using unique firm survey...

This paper re-examines the role of labor-market competition as a determinant of attitudes toward immigration. We claim two main contributions. First, we use more sophisticated measures of the degree of exposure to competition from immigrants than previously done. Specifically, we focus on the...

In this paper, we investigate how changes in the skill mix of local labor supply are absorbed by the economy. We distinguish between three adjustment mechanisms: through factor prices, through an expansion in the size of those production units that use the more abundant skill group more...

Culture has played a pivotal role in human evolution. Yet, the ability of social scientists to study culture is limited by the currently available measurement instruments. Scholars of culture must regularly choose between scalable but sparse survey-based methods or restricted but rich...