The extremely large disparities in employment rates across Italian regions, and the bad performance of the Italian economy in terms of job creation in the 80´s and early 90´s make job creation a top-priority in the economic policy agenda. This paper uses data on employment from 784 Local Labor...

We examine the quantitative predictions of heterogeneous firm models à la Melitz (2003) in the context of the Canada - US Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA) of 1989. We compute predicted increases in trade flows and measured productivity across a range of standard models and compare them to the...

We present a factor-proportions trade model in which heterogeneous firms can offshore intermediate inputs subject to fixed offshoring costs. In the skill-abundant country, high-productivity firms offshore a larger range of labor-intensive inputs to the labor-abundant countries than...

We evaluate manufacturing firms' responses to changes in the real exchange rate (RER) using detailed firm-level data for a large set of countries for the period 2001-2010. We uncover the following stylized facts: In export-oriented emerging Asia, real depreciations are associated with faster...

Bilateral trade imbalances are determined by aggregate trade imbalances, production and expenditure patterns, and trade barriers. We calibrate a dynamic many-sector trade model to match the recent sectoral trade and production shares of 40 economies and the rest of the world. Through a variance...

Epidemiological models assume gravity-like interactions of individuals across space without microfoundations. We combine a simple epidemiological frame-work with a dynamic model of individual location choice. The model predicts that flows of people across space obey a structural gravity...

We propose a quantitative framework for the analysis of industrialization in which specialization in manufacturing or agriculture is driven by comparative advantage and non-homothetic preferences. Countries are integrated through trade but trade is not costless and geographic position matters....

We generalise the traditional development-accounting framework to an open-economy setting. In addition to factor endowments and productivity, relative factor costs emerge as a source of real-income variation across countries. These are shaped by bilateral trade determinants (which underpin the...

We analyze whether second generation immigrants have different political preferences relative to observationally identical host country's citizens. Using data on individual voting behavior in 22 European countries between 2001 and 2017 we characterize each vote on a left-right scale using...

The standard empirical analysis of immigration, based on a simple labor demand and labor supply framework, has emphasized the negative impact of foreign born workers on the average wage of U.S.-born workers (particularly of those without a high school degree). A precise assessment of the average...