Results

CEP discussion paper

Dynamic effects of trade

The existence of aggregate welfare gains from trade is one of the classic insights from international economics. However, these conventional welfare gains are static, in the sense that they take existing factor supplies ...Read more...

Journal article

Regional Science and Urban Economics:

Ports, technology and inter-city trade: the economics and geopolitics of evolving maritime transport networks

Maritime transport remains the backbone of global trade, yet the port and ship- ping network that carries it has been transformed by containerization and related technological advances. Drawing on newly available granula...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Ports, technology and inter-city trade: the economics and geopolitics of evolving maritime transport networks

Maritime transport remains the backbone of global trade, yet the port and shipping network that carries it has been transformed by containerization and related technological advances. Drawing on newly available granular ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Brexit has been an economic failure: here?s the evidence

Putting up trade barriers has made the UK poorer...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Cocaine goes bananas: global spillovers from an illicit supply shock

We study how a sharp expansion in Colombian cocaine production propagated internationally through global trade networks, generating substantial social costs. In Colombia, the production surge increased homicide rates by ...Read more...

Journal article

Spatial Economic Analysis:

Digital network centrality and the structure of goods trade

This paper studies how digital infrastructure is associated with the spatial structure of international trade in goods. We embed data availability into a structural gravity framework, conceptualising it as an information...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Digital network centrality and the structure of goods trade

This paper studies how digital infrastructure is associated with the spatial structure of international trade in goods. We embed data availability into a structural gravity framework, conceptualizing it as an information...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization:

Business groups as knowledge-based hierarchies of firms

We provide the first worldwide overview of the patterns of hierarchical differentiation across Business Groups (BGs), highlighting the coexistence of different hierarchical shapes. We show how the different shapes can ar...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Exchange-rate pass-through and invoicing currency choice in international production networks

We study exchange-rate pass-through and currency choice in international transactions, focusing on bilateral bargaining power in relationships between domestic buyers and foreign suppliers. Using detailed transaction-lev...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of the European Economic Association:

Innovation union: costs and benefits of innovation policy coordination

What is the scope for international cooperation in innovation policy in economies closely integrated via trade? We address this question by building a two-region innovation-driven growth model with endogenous technology ...Read more...

Journal article

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers:

Finding stars: mapping the geography of the world's scientific elites

This paper presents the first systematic city-level mapping of global scientific talent, analysing the top 200,000 star scientists across 3635 cities worldwide annually between 2019 and 2023. We use a novel Knowledge Gen...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Deglobalisation in disguise?

Brexit means that UK exporters of services now face more red tape and fewer opportunities....Read more...

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...

Chapter

Immigration, diversity and innovation in cities and regions

in A Research Agenda for Migration and Innovation

This chapter investigates the interplay between immigrant diversity and innovation, emphasizing the urban and regional dimensions where these effects are most pronounced. Cities and urban areas are pivotal to the generat...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of International Economics:

Paper tiger? Chinese science and home bias in citations

We investigate the phenomenon of home bias in scientific citations, where researchers disproportionately cite work from their own country. We develop a benchmark for expected citations based on the relative size of count...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

The impact of the 2025 US tariff announcements on UK firms

In the first half of 2025, the US and some of its trading partners announced significant changes to import tariffs. This column uses newly designed questions to study the impact of these changes on UK firms and to assess...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

An alliance for open trade: How to counter Trump's tariffs

The US administration's latest threat to impose sweeping new tariffs on many of its closest allies signals a renewed embrace of aggressive unilateralism and misunderstood economics. This column argues that the only effec...Read more...

Blog

UK in a Changing Europe:

Deglobalisation in disguise?

Shania Bhalotia, Swati Dhingra and Danyal Arnold explain their study on the effect of Brexit on the UK's ability to export services abroad. They argue that exporters now face higher trade costs, more red tape and fewer o...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

The battle for trade currency dominance: The dollar vs the renminbi in Argentina

The US dollar has traditionally dominated the invoicing of international trade. But could other currencies one day replace it? This column examines a unique policy experiment in Argentina in 2023. Amid a severe dollar sh...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Export strength does not equal tech strength: Rethinking EU comparative advantage

Amid geopolitical shocks, the EU is revisiting its industrial strategy. However, traditional metrics often paint a misleading picture of Europe's underlying strength. This column uses a new approach to measure the EU's r...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

How the 2018/19 US tariffs against China boosted exports and employment in Mexico

In 2018 and 2019, the US administration hiked tariffs on imports from China. This column shows that imports from Mexico partly filled the gap, leading to an export and employment surge in Mexico. Using highly disaggregat...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

The 2025 trade war: Dynamic impacts across US states and the global economy

In 2025, the US government announced a series of tariff increases targeting major trading partners, including Canada, China, and Mexico. This column estimates the economic consequences of these proposed tariffs to the US...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Deep integration and trade: UK firms in the wake of Brexit

How does dismantling deep integration affect international trade? This column uses firm-level customs data to study the impact of Brexit on UK goods trade. The authors find that in the short term, exit from the Single Ma...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

Fighting climate change: international attitudes toward climate policies

This paper explores global perceptions and understanding of climate change and policies, examining factors that influence support for climate action and the impact of different types of information. We conduct large-scal...Read more...

Journal article

The Review of Economics and Statistics :

The value of managers' export experience: lessons from the Angolan civil war

We investigate how managers help firms grow by entering a new export market. We conduct an event study on the decision to export to Angola using data on Portuguese firms and workers. We evaluate the impact of the presenc...Read more...

Journal article

Small Business Economics :

Realizing expectations? High-impact entrepreneurship across countries

Comparative international entrepreneurship research has often used measures of high-growth expectations entrepreneurship to proxy for the construct of high-impact entrepreneurship. We revisit this practice by assessing t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Paper tiger? Chinese science and home bias in citations

We investigate the phenomenon of home bias in scientific citations, where researchers disproportionately cite work from their own country. We develop a benchmark for expected citations based on the relative size of count...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

What impact have trade sanctions had on Russia? (Podcast)

Recorded at the CEPR Paris Symposium. How effective have the trade sanctions imposed on Russia in 2022 been? Politically, they were comprehensive and quick. But anecdotal reporting has suggested that Russian firms that w...Read more...

Journal article

Canadian Journal of Economics:

Regional specialization: from the geography of industries to the geography of jobs

Our analysis begins with an empirical investigation of how employment concentration in industries and occupations across United States regions has changed over time, and how regional specialization has changed. Results ...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Globalization and conflicts: the good, the bad, and the ugly of corporations in Africa

Using a novel georeferenced datataset on the affiliates and headquarters of multinational enterprises between 2007 and 2018 together with georeferenced conflict data for the African continent, this work establishes a cau...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics:

International friends and enemies

We examine whether, as countries become more economically dependent on a trade partner, they realign politically toward that trade partner. We use network measures of economic exposure to foreign productivity growth deri...Read more...

Journal article

Demography:

Population growth, immigration, and labor market dynamics

This article provides a first synthesis of population flows and labor market dynamics across immigrant and native-born populations. We devise a novel dynamic accounting methodology that integrates population flows from t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The distributional consequences of trade: evidence from the Grain Invasion

We examine the distributional consequences of trade using the New World Grain Invasion that occurred in the second half of the 19th century. We use a newly-created dataset on population, employment by sector, property va...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Global environmental cooperation and innovation

In the ongoing debate on climate change, one of the most pressing challenges is fostering effective international cooperation. This column examines the success of the 1987 'Montreal Protocol' in phasing out harmful chlor...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trade and the end of antiquity

What caused the end of antiquity, the shift of economic activity away from the Mediterranean towards northern Europe? We assemble a large database of coin flows between the 4th and 10th century and use it to document the...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Brexit and investment

In 2016, the UK voted to leave the European Union and growth in UK manufacturing investment ground to a halt. This paper uses administrative trade data to investigate the causal relationship between these events. We expl...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

It takes (more than) a moment: estimating trade flows with superstar exporters

Understanding producers' selection into exporting and its consequences for micro-founded gravity estimation calls for an in-depth analysis of the interplay between aggregate exports and the distribution of producers' pro...Read more...

Journal article

Critical Sociology:

A popular backlash against globalization?

Is there a popular backlash against globalization? When did it start and in which forms? What do we know about its causes? We address these questions in the context of advanced democracies. We see the `globalization back...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Putting quantitative models to the test: an application to Trump's trade war

The primary motivation behind quantitative modeling in international trade and many other fields is to shed light on the economic consequences of policy changes. To help assess and potentially strengthen the credibility ...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics:

Technology transfer in global value chains

Global value chains create opportunities for North-South technology diffusion. This paper studies technology transfer in value chains when contracts are incomplete and input production technologies are imperfectly exclud...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Leaving the global playing field through optimal non-discriminatory corporate taxes and subsidies

Due to markup distortions, in international trade models with monopolistic competition and heterogeneous firms the market equilibrium is inefficient unless demand exhibits constant elasticity of substitution. When it doe...Read more...

Journal article

The Journal of Finance:

Tracing the international transmission of a crisis through multinational firms

We show that multinational firms transmit shocks across countries through their internal capital markets. We study a credit supply shock to parent firms in Germany. International affiliates outside Germany supported thei...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

When tariffs disrupt global supply chains

We study unanticipated tariffs in a setting with firm-to-firm supply relationships. Firms conduct costly searches and negotiate with potential suppliers that pass a reservation level of match productivity. Global supply ...Read more...

Blog

LSE Business Review:

The 'child penalty' creates most of the gender earnings gaps in rich countries

After having children, women tend to change their working hours and wage rates, and even transition to new jobs. This phenomenon, known as the child penalty, explains the bulk of the gender earnings gap in developed coun...Read more...

Journal article

Annals of Economics and Statistics:

Proximity of firms to scientific production

Following Bergeaud et al. (2022), we construct a new measure of proximity between industrial sectors and public research laboratories. Using this measure, we explore the underlying network of knowledge linkages between s...Read more...

Journal article

The Review of Economic Studies:

Using disasters to estimate the impact of uncertainty

Uncertainty rises in recessions and falls in booms. But what is the causal relationship? We construct cross-country panel data on stock market returns to proxy for first- and second-moment shocks and instrument these wit...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Neoclassical growth in an interdependent world

We generalize the closed-economy neoclassical growth model (CNGM) to allow for costly goods trade and capital flows with imperfect substitutability between countries. We develop a tractable, multi-country, quantitative m...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Proximity of firms to scientific production

Following Bergeaud et al. (2022), we construct a new measure of proximity between industrial sectors and public research laboratories. Using this measure, we explore the underlying network of knowledge linkages between s...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Exporting ideas: knowledge flows from expanding trade in goods

We examine the effect of entry by French firms into a new export market on the dynamics of their patents' citations received from that destination. Applying a difference-in-differences identification strategy with a stag...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The skyscraper revolution: global economic development and land savings

Tall buildings are central to facilitating sustainable urbanization and growth in cities worldwide. We estimate average elasticities of city population and built area to aggregate city building heights of 0.12 and -0.17,...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Unravelling the complexities of sanctions

Sanctions have become a linchpin of foreign policy. But as they have grown more complex, understanding their true impact on targeted economies has become increasingly difficult, and evidence of their firm-level effects i...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of International Business Studies:

Integrating host-country political heterogeneity into MNE-state bargaining: insights from international political economy

The international business (IB) literature has emphasised the heterogeneity of firm strategies in shaping MNE-state bargaining, but largely ignored the heterogeneity of states. In contrast, the international political ec...Read more...

Journal article

Energy Policy:

Big oil and the energy transition: evidence from M&A

International Oil Companies (IOCs) represent a significant source of capital and expertise that could be deployed to contribute to the investment required to achieve the energy transition to a low carbon future. This pap...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Knowledge spillovers from clean innovation. A tradeoff between growth and climate?

Innovation policy faces a tradeoff between growth and climate objectives when the knowledge spillover externality from clean innovation is low compared to other sectors. To make such a comparison, we use patent data to e...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Dissecting the sinews of power: international trade and the rise of Britain's fiscal-military state, 1689-1823

We evaluate the role of taxes on trade in the development of imperial Britain's fiscal-military state. Influential work, e.g., Brewer's (1989) Sinews of Power, attributed increased fiscal capacity to the taxation of dome...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

Globalization and pandemics

We provide theory and evidence on the relationship between globalization and pandemics. Business travel facilitates trade and travel leads to human interactions that transmit disease. Trade-motivated travel generates an ...Read more...

Journal article

Research Policy:

Global value chains and domestic innovation

This paper explores how changes in both position and participation in Global Value Chain (GVC) networks affect firm innovation. The analysis combines matched patent-firm data for Japan with measures of GVC network centra...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Responsible sourcing: Theory and evidence from Costa Rica

There is growing pressure on multinational enterprises to implement 'responsible sourcing' requirements for their suppliers in low- and middle-income countries. These include minimum standards on working conditions, such...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Collective bargaining and spillovers in local labor markets

How does collective bargaining affect the broader wage structure? How are such spillovers transmitted? I present a model where firms with wage-setting power that are not covered by collective bargaining agreements, but a...Read more...

Journal article

Ecological Economics:

The environmental cost of the international job market for economists

We provide an estimate of the environmental impact of the recruitment system in the economics profession, known as the "international job market for economists". Each year, most graduating PhDs seeking jobs in academia, ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

From public labs to private firms: magnitude and channels of R&D spillovers

Introducing a new measure of scientific proximity between private firms and public research groups and exploiting a multi-billion euro financing program of academic clusters in France, we provide causal evidence of spill...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Environmental costs of the global job market for economists

Each year, the international job market for economists involves more than 1,000 candidates and several hundred recruiters from around the world meeting for short pre-screening interviews at annual congresses in Europe an...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Clean technologies for growth and equity

Public investment in developing energy sources that don?t cause climate change is a strategy for economic growth that could also contribute to the UK?s levelling up agenda, says Ralf Martin. His analysis indicates that s...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Knowledge flows from public labs to private firms

How knowledge spillovers operate between academia and private firms remains an open question. Antonin Bergeaud, Arthur Guillouzouic, Emeric Henry and Clement Malgouyres find strong spillovers through the contracting, mob...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Globalization and market power

Economic theory suggests that the markup is a key measure of market power and that its relationship with trade is rich and complex. Trade liberalisation can reduce markups via a decline in the residual domestic demand bu...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal :

On Target? Sanctions and the interests of elite policy makers in Iran

How successful are sanctions at targeting the economic interests of political elites in affected countries? We study the case of Iran, using information on the stock exchange-listed assets of two specific political entit...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Market size, markups and international price dispersion in the cement industry

Prices for several intermediate inputs, including cement, are higher in developing economies - particularly in Africa. Combining data from the International Comparison Program with a global directory of cement plants we ...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

Using machine learning to assess the impact of deep trade agreements

Modern preferential trade agreements contain a host of provisions that go beyond tariff liberalisation. By adapting techniques from the machine learning literature, this column develops data-driven methods for selecting ...Read more...

Journal article

International Journal of Human Computer Studies:

Multitasking while driving: a time use study of commuting knowledge workers to assess current and future uses

Commuting has enormous impact on individuals, families, organizations, and society. Advances in vehicle automation may help workers employ the time spent commuting in productive work-tasks or wellbeing activities. To ach...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Structural change within versus across firms: evidence from the United States

We document the role of intangible capital in manufacturing firms' substantial contribution to non-manufacturing employment growth from 1977-2019. Exploiting data on firms' "auxiliary" establishments, we develop a novel ...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Trade with nominal rigidities: understanding the unemployment and welfare effects of the China shock

Researchers examine how increased competition from China impacts the welfare of the US labour market....Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Import liberalisation as export destruction: evidence from the United States

Holger Breinlich, Elsa Leromain, Dennis Novy and Thomas Sampson look at US-China trade relations to examine how import liberalisation brings down import costs and increases competition, but can also lead to lower export ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

How does working from home during Covid-19 affect what managers do? Evidence from time-use studies

We assess how the sudden and widespread shift to working from home during the pandemic impacted how managers allocate time throughout their working day. We analyze the results from an online time-use survey with data on ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Multitasking while driving: a time use study of commuting knowledge workers to access current and future uses

Commuting has enormous impact on individuals, families, organizations, and society. Advances in vehicle automation may help workers employ the time spent commuting in productive work-tasks or wellbeing activities. To ach...Read more...

Journal article

Labour Economics:

Slack and prices during Covid-19: accounting for labor market participation

Strong labor force participation cyclicality during the Covid-19 pandemic has put further into question the capacity of standard Phillips Curve (PC) models to fully capture labor market cyclical conditions. In this paper...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Knowledge spillovers from clean and emerging technologies in the UK

The UK government has committed to increase R&D support for clean technologies in an effort to meet its net-zero target by 2050. The opportunity cost of such programs crucially depends on the value of knowledge spillover...Read more...

Journal article

Research Policy :

No inventor is an island: social connectedness and the geography of knowledge flows in the US

Do informal social ties connecting inventors across distant places promote knowledge flows between them? To measure informal ties, we use a new and direct index of social connectedness of regions based on aggregate Faceb...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...

Blog

VoxEU:

The environmental burden of the international job market for economists

Each year, the 'international job market for economists' involves over 1,000 junior candidates and several hundred recruiters from all over the world meeting for short pre-screening interviews at annual congresses in Eur...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Quantifying the full impact of country-specific policies on trade flows

Rebecca Freeman, Mario Larch, Angelos Theodorakopoulos and Yoto Yotov propose a solution to issues measuring country-specific impact using structural gravity models - a popular way to analyse the impact of trade policie...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The environmental cost of the international job market for economists

We provide an estimate of the environmental impact of the recruitment system in the economics profession, known as the "international job market for economists". Each year, most graduating PhDs seeking jobs in academia, ...Read more...

Journal article

Human-Computer Interaction:

How does working from home during Covid-19 affect what managers do? Evidence from time-use studies

In this research we explore the effects of the forced Work-from-home arrangement during the Covid-19 pandemic on managers. We assess how the sudden and widespread shift to working from home during the pandemic impacted h...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Population growth, immigration and labour market dynamics

This paper examines the role of population flows on labour market dynamics across immigrant and native-born populations in the United Kingdom. Population flows are large, and cyclical, driven first by the maturation of b...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

The globalisation backlash

As populist parties have surged across advanced democracies so, it seems, has a 'globalisation backlash'. This column provides descriptive evidence on the backlash, discusses its theoretical underpinnings within standard...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Business groups as knowledge-based hierarchies of firms

Hierarchical differentiation is a cornerstone of the organizing process. In this paper, we do three things. First, exploiting a newly assembled dataset, we provide the first worldwide overview of the patterns of hierarch...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

The impact of trade costs can be weak or strong - depending on how much countries trade

Many countries try to bring down trade costs by striking free trade agreements, forming currency unions or joining the WTO. But when trade costs fall, how much does trade increase? Natalie Chen and Dennis Novy explain th...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Income and the desire to migrate

We analyse the role of household and country-level personal income in explaining both the desire to emigrate and the desired destination country. We use data from the Gallup World Poll and applications to the US Diversit...Read more...

Journal article

Management Science:

Stars and brokers: knowledge spillovers among medical scientists

This paper estimates the heterogeneity in peer effects among research scientists in terms of network position. I propose a new measure, brokerage degree, that determines the extent to which a scientist depends on a coaut...Read more...

Journal article

European Economic Review:

Financial system architecture and the patterns of international trade

Countries differ in the extent to which their financial systems rely on banks or on financial markets. We offer a model featuring a complex relationship between countries? financial system architecture and their comparat...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trade and innovation

Two central insights from the Schumpeterian approach to innovation and growth are that the pace of innovation is endogenously determined by the expectation of future profits and that growth is inherently a process of cre...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The trade impact of the Covid-19 pandemic

Using a gravity-like approach, we study how Covid-19 deaths and lockdown policies affected countries' imports from China during 2020. We find that a country's own Covid-19 deaths and lockdowns significantly reduced its i...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

No inventor is an island: social connectedness and the geography of knowledge flows in the US

Do informal social ties connecting inventors across distant places promote knowledge flows between them? To measure informal ties, we use a new and direct index of social connectedness of regions based on aggregate Faceb...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Dream jobs

Understanding why certain jobs are `better? than others and what implications they have for a worker?s career is clearly an important but still relatively unexplored question. We provide both a theoretical framework and ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Gravity in international finance: evidence from fees on equity transactions

We shed light on the impact of institutional quality and information barriers on trade in financial services using a novel panel data set on revenue earned on domestic and cross-border equity securities underwriting tran...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Immigrant inventors and diversity in the age of mass migration

A possible unintended but damaging consequence of anti-immigrant rhetoric, and the policies it inspires, is that they may put high-skilled immigrants off more than low-skilled ones at times when countries and businesses ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

International financial flows and misallocation

We study the impact of international financial flows on credit allocation exploiting the early 2000s boom of capital inflows in Italy. Using detailed bank-firm matched data we compare the patterns of credit allocation of...Read more...

Journal article

World Trade Review:

Reopening Pandora's box in search of a WTO-compatible industrial policy? The Brazil-taxation dispute

We critically assess the Appellate Body (AB) report on the Brazil-Taxation dispute, taken to the World Trade Organisation by the European Union and Japan, and encompassing seven different Brazilian industrial programmes ...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Merger policy in a quantitative model of international trade

In a two-country international trade model with oligopolistic competition, we study the conditions on market structure and trade costs under which a merger policy designed to benefit domestic consumers is either too toug...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trade, productivity and (mis)allocation

We examine the gains from globalization in the presence of firm heterogeneity and potential resource misallocation. We show theoretically that without distortions, bilateral and export liberalizations increase aggregate ...Read more...

CEP election analysis

Education and skills

Debates about how to improve education and skills are likely to be an important theme in the run-up to the general election. This briefing summarises evidence on education and skills from the Centre for Economic Performa...Read more...