Using confidential microdata from the US Census, we find that the fraction of manufacturing plants that export rose from 21% in 1987 to 39% in 2006. It has been suggested that similar trends in other countries may have been caused by declining costs of entering foreign markets. Our study tests...

Firm size follows Zipf's Law, a very fat-tailed distribution that implies a few large firms account for a disproportionate share of overall economic activity. This distribution of firm size is crucial for evaluating the welfare impact of macroeconomic policies such as barriers to entry or trade...

This paper considers the key policy issues related to liberalization of trade in financial services that the IMF should be concerned with, and the role the IMF has played in advising on policies related to trade in financial services in its bilateral and multilateral surveillance and...

This paper uses simple economic theory to examine the effects of various policies that are intended to level the playing field in international trade. That is, when foreign producers are given advantages over domestic producers by government subsidies or other interventions that lower their...

Gary R. Saxonhouse died November 30, 2006 in Seattle, WA, where he was being treated for leukemia. To honor his many accomplishments and writings on the Japanese economy and given our longstanding relationships with him, Hugh Patrick of Columbia University, Gavin Wright of Stanford University,...

This paper examines the recent upsurge in foreign acquisitions of U.S. firms, specifically focusing on acquisitions made by firms located in emerging markets. Neoclassical theory predicts that, on net, capital should flow from countries that are capital-abundant to countries that are...

This paper uses a Gravity Model to analyze the border effect in the Japanese market, which indicates how biased interregional trade is compared with international trade. The results suggest that the border effect in Japan is much lower than in the United States and Canada, and has declined year...

We will never know how Nurkse'd5s views of trade and development would have evolved, had he been able to observe the contrasting experiences of developing countries over subsequent years. However, with the benefit of hindsight, we can ask how well the policies and the performances of developing...

Almost from its inception as the European Economic Community, the European Union has excited the hope if not the expectation that it would generate dynamic gains from trade, including perhaps a permanent increase in the rates of growth of participating countries. This paper examines the...

Despite considerable theoretical work predicting that product quality plays an important role in determining the direction of international trade, there is no empirical evidence on the existence and magnitude of such a quality e.ect on trade. In this paper, I provide a framework to estimate the...