This paper investigates a consumption-real exchange rate anomaly from the open macroeconomics literature known as the Backus-Smith puzzle . We both analytically and quantitatively examine how an expansion of trade along extensive margins can contribute to the puzzle's resolution. Our argument is...

We study how the level of trade costs and the intensity of competition interact to explain the nature and intensity of trade within a given industry and the location of firms across countries. As trade costs decrease from very high to very low values, the global economy moves from autarky to...

We present a theoretical framework in which an elitist and a non- elitist university in a developed country compete by choosing their admission standards and deciding whether or not to open a branch campus in a developing country. Students from a developing country attend university either if a...

Most simulated micro-founded macro models use solely consumer-demand aggregates in order to estimate deep economy-wide preference parameters, which are useful for policy eva- luation. The underlying demand-aggregation properties that this approach requires, should be easy to empirically...

This research theoretically and empirically advances the hypothesis that in early stages of development, land and climatic variability had a persistent beneficial effect on the advent of early statehood. A high degree of land and climatic diversity, and its association with potential gains from...

Fleurbaey and Maniquet have proposed the criteria of conditional equality and of egalitarian equivalence to assess the equity among individuals in an ordinal setting. Empirical applications are rare and only partially consistent with their framework. We propose a new empirical approach that...

In this paper we study marriage formation through a two-sided secretary problem approach. We consider individuals with non transferable utility and two different dimensions of heterogeneity, a characteristic evaluated according to the idiosyncratic preferences of potential partners, and a...

The use of bilateral data for the analysis of international migration is at the same time a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing since the dyadic dimension of the data allows researchers to address a number of previously unanswered questions, but it is also a curse for the various analytical...

This paper explains why and how a small country can be an offshore financial center (OFC). We build a model involving a small and a large country competing for portfolio investments. They use two instruments, taxation and institutional infrastructure. We identify the conditions for an OFC to be...

This research establishes that religiosity has a persistent effect on economic outcomes. First we use a sample of migrants in the US to establish that religiosity at the country of origin has a long lasting effect on the religiosity of migrants. Second, exploiting variations in the inherited...