The importance of trade costs in segmenting product markets cannot be captured by considering aggregate prices or in the absence of information on the direction of trade. We address this problem by utilizing product-specific prices along with cross-sectional productivity measures and bilateral...

We study good-by-good deviations from the Law-of-One-Price for over 1,800 retail goods and services between all European Union (EU) countries for the years 1975, 1980, 1985 and 1990. We find that for each of these years, after we control for differences in income and value-added tax rates, there...

A number of recent papers point to the importance of distinguishing between the price reaction to micro and macro shocks in order to reconcile the volatility of individual prices with the observed persistence of aggregate inflation. We emphasize instead the importance of distinguishing between...

We use a panel of thousands of good-level prices before and after the euro in order to compare the determinants and understand the evolution of goods price dispersion across Europe during these two periods. We find that tradeability plays a substantially smaller role in lowering cross-country...

This paper considers the relation between immigration and prices in a number of countries across the world over the period from 1990 to 2006. Immigration is shown to have a negative impact on international relative prices. A 10% increase in the share of immigrant workers in total employment...

This paper investigates the determinants of longevity at a macroeconomic level, emphasizing the important role played by education. To analyze the determinants of longevity, we build a model where households intentionally invest in health and education, and where education exerts external...

Does medical technology originating in countries close to the technology frontier have a significant impact on health outcomes in countries distant from this frontier? This paper considers a framework where lagging countries may benefit from medical technology (a result of research and...

Using cross-sectional data on local currency prices of over 1,800 retail goods and services across 13 European countries in the mid 1980's, we characterize the behavior of average relative prices -- `real exchange rates' -- as well as dispersion around these averages. We find that the averages...