This paper uses barcode-level price data for 16 advanced and emerging market countries over the period 2005-2022 to investigate the role of individual firms and product categories in aggregate inflation. We decompose inflation into the component due to macroeconomic shocks and the granular...

I study the equilibrium and the welfare effects of international trade when product markets are imperfectly competitive due of search frictions--as in Burdett and Judd (1983)--rather than product differentiation--as in Dixit and Stiglitz (1977). Markups are positive, even though there are...

Endogeneity is a primary concern when evaluating causal effects using observational panel data. While unit-specific intercepts control for unobserved time-invariant confounders, dependence between (i) regressors (e.g., marketing mix strategy of interests) and the current error term (regressor...

We document the role of intangible capital in manufacturing firms' substantial contribution to non-manufacturing employment growth from 1977-2019. Exploiting data on firms' "auxiliary" establishments, we develop a novel measure of proprietary in-house knowledge and show that it is associated...

We study the roles of globalization and structural change in the evolution of international GDP comovement among industrialized countries over the period 1978-2007. In recent decades, trade integration between advanced economies increased rapidly while average GDP correlations remained stable....

We study changes in markups across 72 product markets from 2006 to 2018. A growing literature has documented a rise in markups over time using a production function approach; we instead employ the standard microeconomic method, which is to estimate demand and then invert firms' first-order...

I derive a formula for the equilibrium distribution of markups in the search- theoretic model of imperfect competition of Butters (1977), Varian (1980), and Burdett and Judd (1983). The level of markups and the sign of the relationship between a seller's markup and its size depends on the extent...

We estimate the size of the likely unofficial income of a household with a government official by the difference between the income that would be necessary to explain their observed home purchase behavior and the official income. Using unique and comprehensive administrative records on the House...

Of great importance to the future World economy is the future labor force of Asia, as Asia is by far the most populous region in the World. Expected future levels of education, very young and youth population, youth employment and unemployment, dependency rates, human capital per capita, and the...

This paper estimates and quantifies the impact of the diaspora remittance flows on the conflict intensity and outcomes in the Sri Lankan Civil War during the period 1996-2009. We develop an approach to infer which remittance inflows were likely to benefit the Tamil Tiger rebels relative to the...