Indonesia has been pursuing a broad push towards greater trade openness with regional and global partners, seeking to leverage external demand to reach high-income status by 2045. This welcome and timely effort comes amid ongoing trade policy shocks. Our analysis suggests that deeper trade...

New importers increase their conditional survival rate and import share over time. However, a model of multi-input firms with an import entry cost and stochastic import costs cannot replicate these dynamics. I show that an extended model can be reconciled with the data. I calibrate both models...

We consider five models of international trade that belong to the class of models in which the trade elasticity and domestic trade share are sufficient statistics for the welfare cost of autarky. Three are fixed-variety models featuring increasing micro-level margins of adjustment: versions of...

We develop and test a theory of efficient international trade. Efficiency gains arise through lower trade costs faced by 'trade specialists', whose superiority over 'common traders' manifests itself through lower trade costs. To test our theory, we construct and deploy a novel dataset based on...

We develop and test a theory of efficient international trade. Efficiency gains arise through lower trade costs faced by ‘trade specialists’, whose superiority over ‘common traders’ manifests itself through lower trade costs. To test our theory, we construct and deploy a novel dataset...

We study the aggregate implications of production network formation in a quantitative multi-location general equilibrium trade model. Firms search for suppliers and buyers across locations subject to matching frictions, generating a gravity structure of production networks. We develop sufficient...

We provide a selective overview of the literature on the linkages between interstate conflict and international trade, paying special attention to how trade openness (i) affects arming incentives, (ii) the channels through which its effects travel, and (iii) its consequences for the emergence of...

Following the gains from variety literature, this paper estimates the welfare impact of growth of the variety of imported goods in 28 countries in East Africa and East Asia and compares the results. While estimating the gains from variety, the elasticities of substitution are estimated for each...

Who buys imports? By augmenting U.S. grocery purchase data to include origin countries of both products and households, we provide the first evidence that immigrants exhibit substantially stronger preferences for imported consumer goods than natives. We develop and estimate a quantitative trade...

We analyze how non-aligned countries affect welfare outcomes in scenarios of global trade fragmentation. Using a quantitative trade model covering 141 countries and 65 economic sectors, we simulate different scenarios of geoeconomic fragmentation. We find that major non-aligned countries benefit...

We show that climate policy can unlock large environmental gains from trade by inducing economies to specialize according to their environmental comparative advantage. We make this point by exploring the effects of a carbon tax in a quantitative trade model. Our main result is that the...

We study the role of firm heterogeneity and imperfect competition for global production networks and the gains from trade. We develop a quantifiable trade model with two-sided firm heterogeneity, matching frictions, and oligopolistic competition upstream. More productive buyers endogenously...

Im Gefolge der Preisrückgänge für importierte Rohstoffe hat Deutschland im vergangenen Jahr erhebliche Realeinkommensgewinne eingefahren. Vom preisbereinigten Bruttoinlandsprodukt (BIP), das zeitgleich leicht gesunken ist, wird dieser Kaufkraftzuwachs nicht abgebildet. Einen umfassenderen...

A central argument for trade liberalization is that when the 'gains from trade' are shared, countries see large gains in economic development. In this paper, I empirically evaluate this argument and assess the impact of elite capture on regional development. Africa provides a unique study ground...

We develop a general equilibrium structural model with heterogeneous workers and nonhomothetic preferences to quantify the unequal individual-level gains from trade liberalization. The results show that in developed countries, the distribution of gain from trade is relatively balanced. However,...

We measure gains from trade in multi-sector economies with non-homothetic preferences where changes in trade costs generate reallocation of expenditure across sectors. We show how to measure the trade elasticity and how it relates to welfare. In this environment, the trade elasticity now varies...

Power laws in productivity and firm size are well documented empirical regularities. As they are upper right-tail phenomena, this paper shows that assuming asymptotic power functions for various model primitives (such as demand and firm heterogeneity) are sufficient for matching these...

Border procedures around the globe can act as barriers hindering international trade. Another impact of these procedures relates to their economic resource costs. In this study, using a microeconomic framework of international trade, the potential economic gains are estimated for reductions in...

We investigate how trade shocks affect the allocation of labor across plants at the local labor market level. Using Brazil's import liberalization as a quasi-natural experiment, we uncover a new margin for the gains from trade: the reallocation of labor from smaller to larger producers in the...

This paper introduces endogenous workplace quality choice into an international trade model with a monopsonistically competitive labour market, in which firms compete for potential employees by offering them a combination of monetary and non-monetary benefits. To attract the workers required to...

A central argument for trade liberalization is that when the "gains from trade" are shared, countries see large gains in economic development. In this paper, I empirically evaluate this argument and assess the impact of elite capture on regional development. Africa provides a unique study ground...

A central argument for trade liberalization is that when the 'gains from trade' are shared, countries see large gains in economic development. In this paper, I empirically evaluate this argument and assess the impact of elite capture on regional development. Africa provides a unique study ground...

Das preisbereinigte Bruttoinlandsprodukt als zentrales Maß für die im Inland erwirtschafte Leistung hat im Jahr 2022 die heimische Wohlfahrtsentwicklung überschätzt. Denn im Gefolge der Verschlechterung der Terms of Trade ist ein Teil des in Deutschland erwirtschafteten Realeinkom- mens ins...

We develop a structural framework to identify the sources of cross-state heterogeneity in response to US tariff changes. We quantify the effects of unilaterally increasing US tariffs by 25 percentage points across sectors. Welfare changes range from −0.8 percent in Oregon to 2.1 percent in...

We use Belgian data on domestic firm-to-firm transactions and ask how the measurement of the share of imports in final consumption is affected when one uses data recorded at higher levels of aggregation. We find that aggregating detailed firm-to-firm transaction data to the firm level and...