Abrahamsen, Aeppli, Atukeren, Graff, Müller and Schips (2005) object to Kehoe and Prescott's (2002) characterization of the Swiss economy as being in a great depression over the period 1974-2000. They argue that (1) depressions should be defined in terms of declines in labor productivity rather...

Since the early 1990s, the United States has borrowed heavily from its trading partners. This paper presents an analysis of the impact of an end to this borrowing, an end that could occur suddenly or gradually.

There is a lively debate about the impact of trade liberalization on economic growth measured as growth in real gross domestic product (GDP). Most of this literature focuses on the empirical relation between trade and growth. This paper investigates the theoretical relation between trade and...

We investigate the theoretical relationship between trade policy and growth. We use simple versions of some of the most common international trade models to investigate a number of specific mechanisms by which trade liberalization is thought to enhance growth or productivity: improvements in the...

International trade is frequently thought of as a production technology in which the inputs are exports and the outputs are imports. Exports are transformed into imports at the rate of the price of exports relative to the price of imports: the reciprocal of the terms of trade. Cast this way, a...

A sudden stop of capital flows into a developing country tends to be followed by a rapid switch from trade deficits to surpluses, a depreciation of the real exchange rate, and decreases in output and total factor productivity. Substantial reallocation takes place from the nontraded sector to the...

Following its opening to trade and foreign investment in the mid-1980s, Mexico’s economic growth has been modest at best, particularly in comparison with that of China. Comparing these countries and reviewing the literature, we conclude that the relation between openness and growth is not a...

Theories in which firms have heterogeneous productivities, such as those of Melitz (2003) and Chaney (2008), have been successful in capturing this empirical regularity that the average exporting firm is larger than the average nonexporter, but they fail to capture the richness of the...