Results

CEP discussion paper

The economics of tariffs

A central insight from neoclassical economics is that international trade operates like an improvement in production technology. It generates mutual aggregate welfare gains for countries as a whole, but creates winners a...Read more...

Journal article

SERIEs:

Paternity leave in Spain

Between 2017 and 2021, Spain progressively extended paternity leave from 2 to 16 weeks, equalizing it with maternity leave and introducing mandatory weeks. A 2018 reform also allowed fathers to split their leave. Using a...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of International Economics:

Liquidity as competitive advantage: the role of intangibles

We show that short-term liquidity can be a source of competitive advantage by enabling firms to invest in intangible assets. Our analysis leverages a French reform that capped payment delays in trade credit contracts, wh...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...

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...

Journal article

Journal of International Economics:

Accounting for trade patterns

We develop a quantitative framework for decomposing trade patterns. We derive price indexes that determine comparative advantage and the aggregate cost of living. If firms and products are imperfect substitutes, we show ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Accounting for the evolution of China's production and trade patterns

This paper studies the evolution of China's production and trade patterns during its integration into the global economy. We document and explain new facts concerning changes in production and exports at the industry and...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:

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

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

Import liberalization as export destruction? Evidence from the United States

How does import protection affect export performance? In trade models with scale economies, import liberalization can reduce an industry's exports by cutting domestic production. We find this export destruction mechanism...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Technology gaps, trade and income

This paper studies the origins and consequences of international technology gaps. I develop an endogenous growth model where R&D efficiency varies across countries and productivity differences emerge from firm-level tech...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...

CEP discussion paper

Aggregating from micro to macro patterns of trade

We develop a new framework for aggregating from micro to macro patterns of trade. We derive price indexes that determine comparative advantage across countries and sectors and the aggregate cost of living. If firms and p...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Structural adjustments and international trade: theory and evidence from China

This paper studies how changes in factor endowment, technology, and trade costs jointly determine the structural adjustments, which are defined as changes in distributions of production and exports. We document the struc...Read more...

Journal article

The World Economy:

Service trade and occupational tasks: an empirical investigation

Using microdata for Belgium, we investigate the relationship between changes in the task content of production and the rise in the number of service exporters. We show that occupational tasks changes display an extremely...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... Investing in roads

Between 1990 and 2010, China constructed an extensive modern road network, including a national system of limited access highways. Vernon Henderson and colleagues investigate the impact on the growth of Chinese cities an...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Highways, Market Access and Urban Growth in China

We investigate the effects of the construction of the national highway system in China on local economic outcomes. The analysis employs three main approaches. The first is based on a structural model of Ricardian trade t...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Signalling, Incumbency Advantage, and Optimal Reelection Rules

Much literature on political behavior treats politicians as motivated by reelection, choosing actions to signal their types to voters. We identify two novel implications of models in which signalling incentives are impor...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Gravity Redux: Measuring International Trade Costs with Panel Data

Barriers to international trade are known to be large but due to data limitations it is hard to measure them directly for a large number of countries over many years. To address this problem I derive a micro-founded meas...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

A Tale of Two Countries: Unions, Closures and Growth in Britain and Norway

Using linked private sector employer-employee panel data for Britain and Norway we explore the effects of unionization on workplace closure and employment growth over the period 1997-2004. Unions prolonged the life of lo...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Volatility, Labor Market Flexibility, and the Pattern of Comparative Advantage

This paper studies the link between volatility, labor market flexibility, and international trade. International differences in labor market regulations affect how firms can adjust to idiosyncratic shocks. These institut...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Youth-Adult Differences in the Demand for Unionisation: Are American, British, and Canadian Workers All That Different?

This paper examines demand for union membership amongst young workers in Britain, Canada and the United States. The paper benchmarks youth demands for collective representation against those of adult workers and finds th...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Fallacy of the Fiscal Theory of the Price Level

It is not common for an entire scholarly literature to be based on a fallacy, that is, 'on faulty reasoning; misleading or unsound argument'. The 'fiscal theory of the price level', recently re-developed by Woodford,...Read more...