We consider the optimal education policies of a small economy whose government has a limited budget. Initially, the economy is closed and the government chooses its education policy to maximize welfare under autarky. Then the economy trades with the rest of the world. Lastly, the government...

This paper considers the implications of complementarity in private production and constraints on government for optimal fiscal policy. Using an endogenous growth model with public finance, it derives three central results which modify findings in the literature under standard assumptions....

This paper reviews the existing evidence on the effects of tax reforms on output levels and growth over the short and long run from different strands of the literature. It develops and applies criteria to evaluate the usefulness of ex-post estimates to predict the effects of tax reforms ex-ante....

We investigate theoretically and empirically the role of wholesalers in mediating the productivity effects of trade liberalization. Intermediaries provide indirect access to foreign produced inputs. The productivity effects of input tariff cuts on firms that do not directly import therefore...

Consisting of teams working with firm level data, the International Study Group on Exports and Productivity has used comparable micro level panel data for 14 countries and a set of identically specified empirical models to investigate the relationship between exports and productivity. The...

This paper exploits exogenous features of the 1960s/70s container revolution to estimate the impact of the introduction of refrigerated containers (or reefers) on new trade of temperature sensitive products. Our identification strategy is justified by a historical narrative which suggests that...