Results

Journal article

International Economics:

Reassessing EU comparative advantage: the role of technology

Based on a sufficient statistics approach, we show how the state of technology of European industries relative to the rest of the world can be empirically assessed in a way that is simple in terms of computation, parsimo...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Creative destruction through innovation bursts

In theories of creative destruction, product innovation is a key driver of aggregate growth. In this paper, we confront the predictions of these theories about product dynamics with empirical patterns in product-level da...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Lobbying for globalisation

Using detailed information from lobbying reports filed under the Lobbying Disclosure Act, we construct a unique dataset that allows us to identify which firms lobby on Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) negotiated by the Unite...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of International Economics:

All aboard: the effects of port development

Seaports facilitate the fast flow of goods across space, but ports also entail local costs borne by host cities. We use the introduction of containerized shipping to explore the effects of port development. At the local ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Endogenous mobility in pandemics: theory and evidence from the United States

We study infectious diseases in a spatial epidemiology model with forward-looking individuals who weigh disease environments against economic opportunities when moving across regions. This endogenous mobility allows regi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Firms in product space: adoption, growth and competition

Which products are potentially produced together? When demand for a product increases, which firms will supply it? Using multi-product production patterns within and across firms, we recover a continuous cost based dista...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Rethinking revealed comparative advantage with micro and macro data

The Balassa's index of revealed comparative advantage does not necessarily reveal Ricardian comparative advantage. We propose an alternative sufficient statistics approach based on a quantitative standard trade model inc...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review :

The impact of regulation on innovation

We present a framework that can be used to assess the equilibrium impact of regulation on endogenous innovation with heterogeneous firms. We implement this model using French firm-level panel data, where there is a sharp...Read more...

Journal article

Management Science:

Information spillovers in experience goods competition

Trialing an experience good allows consumers to learn their value for the sampled good and also informs beliefs about their value for similar products. These demand-side information spillovers across products create a re...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Unraveling firms: demand, productivity and markups heterogeneity

We develop a novel framework that simultaneously allows recovering heterogeneity in demand, quantity TFP and markups across firms while leaving the correlation between the three dimensions unrestricted. We accomplish thi...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Political Economy:

The comparative advantage of firms

Resource-based theories propose that firms grow by diversifying into products that use common capabilities. We provide evidence for common-input capabilities, using a policy that removed entry barriers in input markets t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Endogenous cross-region human mobility and pandemics

We study infectious diseases using a Susceptible-Infected-Recovered-Deceased model with endogenous cross-region human mobility. Individuals weigh the risk of infection against economic opportunities when moving across re...Read more...

Journal article

Nature Communications:

The effect of Covid certificates on vaccine uptake, health outcomes, and the economy

In the COVID-19 pandemic many countries required COVID certificates, proving vaccination, recovery, or a recent negative test, to access public and private venues. We estimate their effect on vaccine uptake for France, G...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of International Economics:

Technology, market structure and the gains from trade

We study the gains from trade in a model with oligopolistic competition, heterogeneous firms and innovation. Our key finding is that a trade-induced increase in market concentration can be an important source of the gain...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Omnia Juncta in Uno*: foreign powers and trademark protection in Shanghai's concession era

We examine how trademark protection - a prevalent but underexplored intellectual property right - affects international firms and market outcomes in an emerging economy. Exploiting the unexpected introduction of China's ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Firm export responses to tariff hikes

We study how firms react to unexpected increases in import tariffs. We identify our results from a sudden removal of American preferential tariffs applied on Argentine imports under the Generalized System of Preferences,...Read more...

Journal article

European Economic Review:

Global banking: endogenous competition and risk taking

When banks expand abroad, their riskiness decreases if foreign expansion happens in destination countries that are more competitive than their origin countries. We reach this conclusion in three steps. First, we develop ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Data-intensive innovation and the State: evidence from AI firms in China

Artificial intelligence (AI) innovation is data-intensive. States have historically collected large amounts of data, which is now being used by AI firms. Gathering comprehensive information on firms and government procur...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

All aboard: the effects of port development

Seaports facilitate the fast flow of goods across space, but ports also entail local costs borne by host cities. We use the introduction of containerized shipping to explore the effects of port development. At the local ...Read more...

Journal article

Review of Industrial Organization:

The gravity of intermediate goods

One of the puzzles of the gravity literature is the persistent effect of distance on trade flows, despite the dramatic fall in trade costs during the last few decades (Disdier and Head in Rev Econ Stat 90(1):37?48, 2008)...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Environmental preferences and technological choices: is market competition clean or dirty?

We investigate the effects of consumers' environmental concerns and market competition on firms' decisions to innovate in 'clean' technologies. Agents care about their consumption and environmental footprint; firms pursu...Read more...

Journal article

Quarterly Journal of Economics:

Measuring aggregate price indices with taste shocks: theory and evidence for CES preferences

We develop an approach to measuring the cost of living for CES preferences that treats demand shocks as taste shocks that are equivalent to price shocks. In the presence of relative taste shocks, the Sato-Vartia price in...Read more...

Journal article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics:

The unequal gains from product innovations: evidence from the US retail sector

This article examines how product innovations led to inflation inequality in the United States from 2004 to 2015. Using scanner data from the retail sector, I find that annual inflation for retail products was 0.661 (std...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The comparative advantage of firms

Resource based theories propose that firms grow by diversifying into products which use common capabilities. We provide evidence for common input capabilities using a policy that removed entry barriers in input markets t...Read more...

Journal article

Review of Economic Studies:

Carry-along trade

Large multi-product firms dominate international trade flows. This paper documents new facts about multi-product manufacturing exporters that are not easily reconciled with existing multi-product models. Using novel link...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Political Economy:

Monopolistic competition and optimum product diversity under firm heterogeneity

Empirical work has drawn attention to the high degree of productivity differences within industries and their role in resource allocation. This paper examines the allocational efficiency of such markets. Productivity dif...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Technology, market structure and the gains from trade

We study the gains from trade in a new model with oligopolistic competition, firm heterogeneity, and innovation. Lowering trade costs reduces markups on domestic sales but increases markups on export sales, as firms do n...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Managing trade: evidence from China and the US

We study how management practices shape export performance using matched production-trade-management data for Chinese and American firms and a randomized control trial in India. Better managed firms are more likely to ex...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Economic Literature:

Global firms

Research in international trade has changed dramatically over the last twenty years, as attention has shifted from countries and industries towards the firms actually engaged in international trade. The now-standard hete...Read more...

Journal article

Research in Economics:

Monopolistic competition and optimum product selection: why and how heterogeneity matters

After some decades of relative oblivion, the interest in the optimality properties of monopolistic competition has recently re-emerged due to the availability of an appropriate and parsimonious framework to deal with fir...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Product diversification in Indian manufacturing

The presence of global value chains challenges the neoclassical idea of the firm since it implies firms are not monolithic but are rather interdependent on the larger economic environment. Examining establishments, the s...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The hospital as a multi-product firm: the effect of hospital competition on value-added indicators of clinical quality

There is increasing international interest in using Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) to assess health care provider performance. PROMs are a fundamental advance on existing indicators of health care quality in t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Global banking: risk taking and competition

Direct involvement of global banks in local retail activities can reduce risk-taking by promoting local competition. We develop this argument through a model in which multinational banks operate simultaneously in differe...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Multi-product firms and product quality

We examine the global operations of multi-product firms. We present a flexible heterogeneous-firm trade model with either limited or strong scope for quality differentiation. Using customs data for China during 2002-2006...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of International Economics:

Multi-product firms and product quality

We examine the global operations of multi-product firms. We present a flexible heterogeneous-firm trade model with either limited or strong scope for quality differentiation. Using customs data for China during 2002?2006...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Product switching and the business cycle

This paper explores role of product adding and dropping within manufacturing firms over the business cycle. While a substantial body of work has explored the importance of the extensive margins of firm entry and exit in ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Global firms

Research in international trade has changed dramatically over the last twenty years, as attention has shifted from countries and industries towards the firms actually engaged in international trade. The now-standard hete...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Swimming upstream: input-output linkages and the direction of product adoption

Multiproduct firms dominate production, and their product turnover contributes substantially to aggregate growth. Firms continually adapt their product mix, but what determines which products firms expand into? Theories ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Stagnation traps

We provide a Keynesian growth theory in which pessimistic expectations can lead to very persistent, or even permanent, slumps characterized by unemployment and weak growth. We refer to these episodes as stagnation traps,...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Income and population growth

Do populations grow as countries become richer? In this study we estimate the effects on population growth of shocks to national income that are plausibly exogenous and unlikely to be driven by technological change. For ...Read more...

Journal article

The Review of Economics and Statistics:

Intermediaries in international trade: products and destinations

This paper examines the factors that give rise to intermediaries in exporting and explores the implications for trade volumes. Export intermediaries such as wholesalers serve different markets and export different produc...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Dynamic selection: an idea flows theory of entry, trade and growth

This paper develops an idea flows theory of trade and growth with heterogeneous firms. New firms learn from incumbent firms, but the diffusion technology ensures entrants learn not only from frontier technologies, but fr...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

Monopolistic competition and optimum product selection

We provide novel insights on the decentralization of optimal outcomes under monopolistic competition with nonseparable utility, variable demand elasticity, and endogenous firm heterogeneity. Relative to the unconstrained...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trapped factors and China's impact on global growth

When China?s accession to the WTO exposed European firms to import competition, they responded by increasing their investment in innovation. This response was stronger in industries and firms where factors of production ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The financial resource curse

This paper presents a model of financial resource curse, i.e. episodes of abundant access to foreign capital coupled with weak productivity growth. We study a two-sector, tradable and non-tradable, small open economy. Th...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Monopolistic Competition and Optimum Product Selection: Why and How Heterogeneity Matters

After some decades of relative oblivion, the interest in the optimality properties of monopolistic competition has recently re-emerged due to the availability of an appropriate and parsimonious framework to deal with fir...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

On the Measurement of Trade Costs: Direct vs. Indirect Approaches to Quantifying Standards and Technical Regulations

In this article, we review the literature on the measurement of trade costs in international trade with a special emphasis on nontariff measures and in particular on standards and technical regulations. We distinguish `d...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Market Size, Competition, and the Product Mix of Exporters

We build a theoretical model of multi-product firms that highlights how competition across market destinations affects both a firm's exported product range and product mix. We show how tougher competition in an export ma...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Intermediaries in International Trade: Direct Versus Indirect Modes of Export

This paper examines the factors that give rise to intermediaries in exporting and explores the implications for trade volumes. Export intermediaries such as wholesalers serve different markets and export different produc...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Geographic Concentration and the Temporal Scope of Agglomeration Economics: An Index Decomposition

The paper decomposes a geographical concentration index to examine the temporal scope of a spillover, which is the period of time over which one firm?s activity directly affects the location of other firms? activities. N...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Where is the Economics in Spatial Econometrics?

Spatial econometrics has been criticized by some economists because some model specifications have been driven by data-analytic considerations rather than having a firm foundation in economic theory. In particular this a...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trade as an Engine of Creative Destruction: Mexican Experience with Chinese Competition

This paper exploits the surge in Chinese exports from 1994 to 2004 as a natural experiment to evaluate the effects of a unilateral low wage trade and competition shock to producers in Mexico. We find that this shock caus...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Trade, Wages and Productivity

We develop a new general equilibrium model of monopolistic competition with heterogeneous firms, variable demand elasticity and multiple asymmetric regions, in which trade integration induces wage and productivity change...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trade, Wages and Productivity

We develop a new general equilibrium model of monopolistic competition with heterogeneous firms, variable demand elasticity and multiple asymmetric regions, in which trade integration induces wage and productivity change...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Margins of US Trade

Recent research in international trade emphasizes the importance of firms? extensive margins for understanding overall patterns of trade as well as how firms respond to specific events such as trade liberalization. In th...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Product Market Deregulation and the U.S. Employment Miracle

We consider the dynamic relationship between product market entry regulation and equilibrium unemployment. The main theoretical contribution is combining a job matching model with monopolistic competition in the goods ma...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Technological Diversification

Economies at early stages of development are often shaken by abrupt changes in growth rates, whereas in advanced economies growth rates tend to be relatively stable. To explain this pattern, we propose a theory of techno...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Protection for Sale Made Easy

Formal analysis of the political economy of trade policy was substantially redirected by the appearance of Gene Grossman and Elhanan Helpman?s 1994 paper, ?Protection for Sale?. Before that article a fairly wide range of...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Inflation Premium and Oil Price Volatility

This paper provides a fully micro-founded New Keynesian framework to study the interaction between oil price volatility, pricing behavior of firms and monetary policy. We show that when oil has low substitutability, firm...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Multi-Product Firms and Trade Liberalization

This paper develops a general equilibrium model of multi-product firms and analyzes their behavior during trade liberalization. Firm productivity in a given product is modeled as a combination of firm-level ?ability? and...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

An R&D-Based Model of Multi-Sector Growth

We develop a multi-sector general equilibrium model in which productivity growth is driven by the production of sector-specific knowledge. In the model, we find that long run differences in total factor productivity grow...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Information and Communication Technologies in a Multi-Sector Endogenous Growth Model

This paper investigates the impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) on growth in an economy, consisting of three sectors, ICT-producing, ICT-using and non-ICT-using. The benefits from ICT come from the...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Multi-Product Firms and Product Switching

This paper examines the frequency, pervasiveness and determinants of product switching among U.S. manufacturing firms. We find that two-thirds of firms alter their mix of five-digit SIC products every five years, that on...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trade and Growth with Heterogeneous Firms

This paper explores the impact of trade on growth when firms are heterogeneous. We find that greater openness produces anti-and pro-growth effects. The Melitz-model selection effects raises the expected cost of introduci...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Products and Productivity

Firms' decisions about which goods to produce are often made at a more disaggregate level than the data observed by empirical researchers. When products differ according to production technique or the way in which they e...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

How Does Product Market Competition Shape Incentive Contracts?

This paper studies the effect of product market competition on the explicit compensation packages that firms offer to their CEOs, executives and workers. We use a large sample of both traded and non-traded UK firms and e...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Product Market Competition Returns to Skill and Wage Inequality

This paper shows that increasing product market competition can have a direct impact on the employment relationship and on wage inequality. I develop a simple model in which an increase in product market competition incr...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Executive Compensation and Product Market Competition

The aim of this paper is to study the effects of product market competition on the explicit compensation packages that firms offer to their executives. In order to measure the net effect of competition we use two differe...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Product Choice and Product Switching

This paper develops a model of endogenous product selection by firms. The theory is motivated by new evidence we present on the importance of product switching by U.S. manufacturers. Two-thirds of continuing firms change...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Matching Demand and Supply in a Weightless Economy: Market-Driven Creativity With and Without IPRs

Many cultural products have the same nonrival nature as scientific knowledge. They therefore face identical difficulties in creation and dissemination. One traditional view says market failure is endemic: societies toler...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Technology Dissemination and Economic Growth: Some Lessons for the New Economy

This paper attempts to draw lessons for the New Economy from what economists know about technology dissemination and economic growth. It argues that what is most notable about the New Economy is that it is knowledge-driv...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Product Standards, Trade Disputes and Protectionism

Trade disputes over national product standards are a growing source of tension in the international trading system. The usual pattern is that a country introduces a new product standard for all sales of a good in its loc...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Per Capita Income Demand for Variety, and International Trade: Linder Reconsidered

We analyse a monopolistically competitive model of international trade where goods must be consumed in indivisible amounts. The number of varieties that enter a consumer's optimal consumption bundle is increasing in the...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Cross Country Growth Comparison: Theory to Empirics

This paper reviews the cross-country record of economic growth, using as organizing framework how economic theory has guided that empirical analysis. The paper argues that recent studies of economic growth u both empiric...Read more...