This paper investigates the role that the entry and exit of heterogeneous firms plays in shaping aggregate fluctuations in economic activity. In so doing, it develops a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model in which procyclical entry and countercyclical exit along a real business cycle...

Trade facilitation policy focuses on accelerated and transparent shipment processing to reduce trade costs. A common measure to evaluate processing frictions is the time it takes to import. In this paper we translate import processing times to costs. Our theory considers that shipment processing...

In this paper, we estimate the effects of transit systems that substantially streamline administrative processing of trade flows. In so doing, we use a unique dataset that consists of the entire universe of El Salvador's export transactions over the period 2007-2013 and includes information on...

We use detailed data on exporters from Costa Rica, Ecuador and Uruguay as well as on their buyers to show that: aggregate exports are disproportionally driven by few multi-buyers exporters; and each multi-buyer exporter's foreign sales of any product are in turn accounted for by few dominant...

Recent contributions on tax competition recognize the interaction between both horizontal and vertical tax externalities in a single federation. In this paper, we extend the theoretical analysis to a framework with multiple federations (a Union). We show that the relative size of a federation in...

In this paper, we estimate the trade effects of a transit system upgrading that streamlines border processing in developing countries. Our empirical approach combines transaction level export data from El Salvador with unique data that distinguishes export flows that were processed on the...

Accurately classifying products is essential in international trade. Virtually all countries categorize products into tariff lines using the Harmonized System (HS) nomenclature for both statistical and duty collection purposes. In this paper, we apply and assess several different algorithms to...