The authors use disaggregated export data to explore the relationship between economic discovery and economic development. They find that discoveries, or episodes, when countries begin exporting a new product are not limited to so-called"dynamic"industries. Rather, they also occur in traditional...

Recent research highlights the relationship between economic development and productive diversification, which may be hindered by market failures. After identifying stages of diversification in disaggregated export data, the authors develop a metric for the flows of export"discoveries,"or...

This paper examines the link between sectoral concentration and overall performance in the search for on-the-frontier innovations, inside-the-frontier innovations, and export booms. It extends the literature by increasing country coverage and the types of search processes considered, and by...

The literature on the relationship between economic diversification and development has grown rapidly in recent years, partly due to the surprising finding that diversification rises with gross domestic product per capita up to a certain point. Export diversification along the extensive margin...

This paper builds on previous studies to uncover evidence suggesting that cyclical fluctuations in returns to schooling are determined by fluctuations in foreign demand, which tend to be positively correlated with returns to schooling. The effect of export fluctuations (driven by changes in...

This paper explores the impact of structural reforms on a comprehensive set of macro-level labor-market outcomes, including the unemployment rate, the average wage index, and overall and female employment levels and labor force participation rates. Together these outcome variables capture the...

This paper assesses the impact of the rise of China on the trade of Latin American and Caribbean economies. The study proposes an index to measure the impact on trade, which suggests sizable effects, especially in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Honduras, Mexico, and Paraguay. The paper uses the index...

This paper provides an overview of the impact of once-and-for-all changes in commodity prices and other prices on household welfare. It begins with a collection of stylized facts related to commodities based on household survey data from Latin America and Africa. The data uncover strong...

Interest in assessing the impacts on developing countries of changes in major markets'economic performance has risen in tandem with global economic uncertainty over short- and medium-term growth prospects. This paper proposes a methodology to measure the vulnerability of a country's exports to...

In the 1990s the mainstream consensus was that trade causes growth. Subsequent research shed doubt on the consensus view, as evidence suggested that the identification of the effect of trade on growth was problematic in the existing literature. This paper contributes to this debate by focusing...