We incorporate trade in tasks à la Grossman and Rossi-Hansberg (2008) into a small open economy version of the theory of firm organization of Marin and Verdier (2012) to examine how offshoring affects the way firms organize. We show that the offshoring of production tasks leads firms to...

We incorporate trade in tasks à la Grossman and Rossi-Hansberg (2008) into a small open economy version of the theory of firm organization of Marin and Verdier (2012) to examine how offshoring affects the way firms organize. We show that the offshoring of production tasks leads firms to...

The virtual economy argument for Russia suggests that barter allows the parties to pretend that the manufacturing sector is producing value by enabling this sector to sell its output at a higher price than its market value. We confront this prediction with the actual pricing behavior of...

The rise of barter and non-cash payments has become a dominant feature of the Russian transition to a market economy. This paper confronts with empirical evidence two approaches to explain barter in Russia: the ’illusion view’ and the ’trust view’ of barter. The...

This paper is a reply to Barry Ickes' critique of my paper “Trust versus Illusion: What is Driving Demonetization in Russia?†in which I show that the data reject Barry Ickes' Virtual Economy explanation of barter in Russia in favor of an institutional explanation based on the lack of...