Examining the relationship between factor endowments and production patterns using international and Japanese regional data, we provide the first empirical confirmation of Ethier's correlation approach to the Rybczynski theorem. Moreover, we find evidence of substantial production indeterminacy....

This paper estimates the effects of intranational and international R&D spillovers on the cost and production structure for ten Canadian and Japanese manufacturing industries. Domestic spillovers generate greater effects on average variable cost and factor intensities compared to international...

This paper focuses on two issues. First, a reexamination of the data on the level of foreign direct investment (FDI) in Japan suggests that foreign firms sell five to six times more in Japan than is commonly believed. Previous studies severely underestimated the stock of FDI in Japan due to poor...

We analyze fiscal policy and fiscal sustainability in Japan using a variant of the methodology developed in Blanchard (1990). We find that Japan can achieve fiscal sustainability over a 100-year horizon with relatively small changes in the tax-to-GDP ratio. Our analysis differs from more...

Since the seminal work of Krugman (1979), product variety has played a central role in models of trade and growth. In spite of the general use of love-of-variety models, there has been no systematic study of how the import of new varieties has contributed to national welfare gains in the United...

Theories featuring multiple equilibria are now widespread across many fields of economics. Yet little empirical work has asked if such multiple equilibria are salient features of real economies. We examine this in the context of the Allied bombing of Japanese cities and industries in WWII. We...

We develop a new approach to measuring the cost of living for constant elasticity of substitution (CES) preferences. Our approach allows for demand shocks for individual goods (to rationalize micro data) while preserving a money-metric expenditure function (to compare the cost of living over...

Official price indexes, such as the CPI, are imperfect indicators of inflation calculated using ad hoc price formulae different from the theoretically well-founded inflation indexes favored by economists. This paper provides the first estimate of how accurately the CPI informs us about "true"...

A striking feature of many financial crises is the collapse of exports relative to output. In the 2008 financial crisis, real world exports plunged 17 percent while GDP fell 5 percent. This paper examines whether deteriorations in bank health can help explain the large drops in exports relative...

The empirical literature in international finance has produced three key results about international price deviations: borders give rise to flagrant violations of the law of one price, distance matters enormously for understanding these deviations, and most papers find that convergence rates...