Less developed countries tend to experience higher output volatility, a fact that is, in part, explained by their specialization in more volatile sectors. This paper proposes theoretical explanations for this pattern of specialization -- with the complexity of the goods playing a central role....

Less developed countries tend to experience higher output volatility, a fact that is in part explained by their specialization in more volatile sectors. This paper proposes theoretical explanations for this pattern of specialization – with the complexity of the goods playing a central role....

This paper investigates both aggregate and distributional impacts of the trade integration of China, India, and Central and Eastern Europe in a quantitative multi-country multi-sector model, comparing outcomes with and without factor market frictions. Under perfect within-country factor...

We propose a novel identification scheme for a non-technology business cycle shock, that we label Òsentiment.Ó This is a shock orthogonal to identified surprise and news TFP shocks that maximizes the short-run forecast error variance of an expectational variable, alternatively a GDP forecast...

This paper investigates the welfare gains from European trade integration, and the role of comparative advantage in determining the magnitude of those gains. We use a multi-sector Ricardian model implemented on 79 countries, and compare welfare in the 2000s to a counterfactual scenario in which...

This paper evaluates the welfare impact of observed levels of migration and remittances in both origins and destinations, using a quantitative multi-sector model of the global economy calibrated to aggregate and firm-level data on 60 developed and developing countries. Our framework accounts...

This paper uses a database covering the universe of French firms for the period 1990-2007 to provide a forensic account of the role of individual firms in generating aggregate fluctuations. We set up a simple multi-sector model of heterogeneous firms selling to multiple markets to motivate a...

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 proposes a new channel through which international trade affects macroeconomic volatility. We study a multi-country model with heterogeneous firms that are subject to idiosyncratic firm-specific shocks. When the distribution of firm size follows a power law with exponent sufficiently...

A well established empirical result is that countries that trade more with each other exhibit higher business cycle correlation. This paper examines the mechanisms underlying this relationship using a large cross-country industry-level panel dataset of manufacturing production and trade. We show...