In partial equilibrium, a reduction in import barriers may be thought to lead to an increase in imports and a reduction in trade surplus. However, the general equilibrium effect can go in the opposite direction. We study how trade reforms affect current accounts by embedding a modified...

When a sovereign faces the risk of debt default, it may be tempted to expropriate the private sector. This may be one reason for why international investment in private companies has to take into account the sovereign risk. But the likelihood of a transfer from the sovereign risk to corporate...

While in standard housing economics housing is regarded as an asset and a consumption good, we study in this paper the consequences for housing prices if housing is also a status good. More concretely, if a family's housing wealth relative to others is an important marker for relative status in...

Trade globalization may affect corporate transparency via multiple channels, with potentially opposite signs. We aim to empirically disentangle these channels by tracking evolution of corporate transparency for 4061 listed firms in tradable sectors in 49 countries during 1992–2005. By using...

If trade barriers are managed by inefficient institutions, trade liberalization can lead to greater-than-expected gains. We examine Chinese textile and clothing exports before and after the elimination of externally imposed export quotas. Both the surge in export volume and the decline in export...

This paper generalizes the gross exports accounting framework at the country level, recently proposed by Koopman, Wang, and Wei (2014), to one that decomposes gross trade flows (for both exports and imports) at the sector, bilateral, or bilateral sector level. We overcome major technical...

This paper studies the effect of transport infrastructure on the real exchange rate (RER) and reaches two relatively strong conclusions. First, while the list of robust determinants of the RER is not long, transport infrastructure belongs to that list. Many other potential determinants proposed...

When a sovereign faces the risk of debt default, it may be tempted to expropriate the private sector. This may be one reason for why international investment in private companies has to take into account the sovereign risk. But the likelihood of a transfer from the sovereign risk to corporate...