The world is replete with spatial frictions. Shipping goods across cities entails trade frictions. Commuting within cities causes urban frictions. How important are these frictions in shaping the spatial economy? We develop and quantify a novel framework to address this question at three...

Using micro data for Belgium we investigate the relationship between occupational tasks changes and the rise of service trade. We focus the analysis on the extensive margin and look at the heterogeneous proliferation of firms involved in exports and imports of services across sectors...

This paper presents new evidence on managerial and organizational factors that explain firm level energy efficiency and TFP. We interviewed managers of 190 randomly selected manufacturing plants in the UK and matched their responses with official business microdata. We find that 'climate...

Barriers to international trade are known to be large but due to data limitations it is hard to measure them directly for a large number of countries over many years. To address this problem I derive a micro-founded measure of bilateral trade costs that indirectly infers trade frictions from...

Guy Michaels and colleagues show how new technologies are polarising the labour market, with the middle-skilled losing out most

A Resource Curse? The impact of oil windfalls on living standards in Brazil

The recession of 2008-09 inflicted a larger cumulative loss of UK output than any of the previous post-war recessions, yet there has been a relatively low loss of employment, at least so far. Paul Gregg and Jonathan Wadsworth look for an explanation.

The European Commission plans to tighten the greenhouse gas emissions targets in the Emissions Trading System. Ralf Martin and colleagues examine the likely impact on affected businesses, and conclude that industry is exploiting concerns about competitiveness to obtain free emission permits...

The integration of immigrants and their children in Europe

Peter Boone and Simon Johnson believe that the next financial crisis could lead to economic disaster