The latest World Bank estimates of real GDP per capita for China are significantly lower than previous ones. We review possible sources of this puzzle and conclude that it reflects a combination of factors, including substitution bias in consumption, reliance on urban prices which we estimate...

The ‘China shock’ operated in part through the housing market, which is one reason why its impact was so large in the United States. We add housing to a multi-region monopolistic competition model, with individuals choosing whether and where to work. Controlling for housing reduces the...

In this paper we develop a monopolistic competition model where firms exercise their market power across multiple products. Even with CES preferences, markups are endogenous. Firms choose their optimal product scope by balancing the net profits from a new variety against the costs of...

Recent research has demonstrated the importance of institutional quality at the country level for both the volume of trade and the ability to trade in differentiated goods that rely on contract enforcement. This paper takes advantage of cross-provincial variation in institutional quality in...

We examine the employment responses to import competition from China and to global export expansion from the United States, both of which have been expanding strongly during the past decades. We find that although Chinese imports reduce jobs, at both the industry level and the local commuting...

Red-tape barriers (RTBs) are an important source of trade costs, but have received little scholarly attention to date. Here we examine the economic-political determinants of RTBs and their effects on trade. Because of their wasteful nature, RTBs have very different implications from those of...

A two-period model of temporary equilibrium with rationing is presented, paying particular attention to agents' expectations of future constraints. it is shown that with arbitrary constraint expectations many different types of current equilibria may be consistent with the same set of (current...

What kind of tariff reform is likely to raise welfare in situations where tariff revenue is important? Uncertainty about specification and risk from imprecise parameter estimates of any particular specification reduce the credibility of simulation estimates. A promising alternative is to develop...

We show that the effects of tariff changes on welfare and import volume can be fully characterized by their effects on the generalized mean and variance of the tariff distribution. Using these tools, we derive new results for welfare- and market-access-improving tariff changes, which imply two...

This paper develops and characterizes an index of trade policy restrictiveness defined as the uniform tariff equivalent which maintains the same volume of trade as a given set of tariffs, quota, and domestic taxes and subsidies. We relate this volume-equivalent index to the Trade Restrictiveness...