Working Papers

The constraint on informal finance is commonly taken to be high costs and limited supply. But the majority of informal investors – family and friends – is often willing to supply funds at negative ret…

This paper shows that the R&D intensity of an industry plays an important role in determining international trade patterns via its e¤ect on scale economies. I first develop a model of trade with h…

Timor-Leste’s first ten years of independence have been turbulent and a large share of the population remains poor. Broad-based improvements in living standards will require improvements in agricultur…

This paper proposes a cross-border M&A model with financially constrained owners in which the identity of the buyer and seller can be determined. We show that policies blocking foreign acquisition…

The theory of the firm suggests that firms can respond to poor contract enforcement by vertically integrating their production process. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether firms’ integrati…

Fifteen years after the introduction of highly ambitious social insurance programs for urban Chinese workers, a large number of them remain un-insured. This paper examines the relationship between lab…

A large literature has studied the context that affects women’s numerical representation, but few have moved beyond numbers to study the drivers of a gender gap in political influence among elected po…

Central banks have been made more independent in many countries. A common rationale has been the existence of a credibility (or lack-of-trust) problem for monetary policy. This indicates a possible an…

The primary objective of most trade agreements is to restrain members' use of trade policies for protectionist purposes. But it would be pointless to restrict the application of border instruments wit…

The purpose of this study is to present to readers with limited training in economics the perspective that most international trade economists bring to the study of trade agreements. It focuses on the…

Previous research has recognized that weak institutions can hamper investments and alter patterns of trade. However, little is known about the impact of institutional quality on offshoring. This is su…

Recent theoretical analysis suggests that a reduction in the cost of exporting increases the degree of assortative matching between workers and firms in export-oriented industries. Changes that reduce…

In games with continuum strategy sets, we model a player’s uncertainty about another player’s strategy, as an atomless probability distribution over the other player’s strategy set. We call a strategy…

Private equity firms are often criticized for laying off workers, but the evidence on who loses their jobs and why is scarce. This paper argues that explanations for job polarization also explain layo…

The entry of large (“big-box”) stores and the accompanying drastic decrease in the overall number of stores represent a striking trend in retail. We use a dynamic model to measure the impact of the en…

We survey the literature on venture capital and institutions and present a case study comparing the development of the venture capital market in the US to Sweden. Our literature survey underscores tha…

The Dispute Settlement (DS) system is a central feature of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement. This compulsory and binding two-level mechanism for the adjudication of disputes between WTO Me…

This chapter focuses on the role of corporate financial strategies to improve firms’ market valuations, and thus lower their cost of capital. The identification of successful strategies is accomplishe…

This paper attempts to measure the size of South-South FDI in developing East Asia and the trends in it, and the characteristics of the investing countries and the investments themselves. It also summ…

The current political turmoil in the Arab world has contributed to renewed interest in the Barcelona Process. This paper explores whether deeper integration in the form of trade facilitation – i.e. im…

Aiming to explore how the survival of trade flows has evolved over time, we analyze a rich data set of detailed imports to individual EU15 countries from 140 non-EU exporters, covering the period 1962…

The theory of the firm suggests that firms can respond to poor contract enforcement by vertically integrating their production process. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether firms' integrati…

Recent empirical evidence suggests that prices for some goods and services are higher in larger markets. This paper provides a demand-side explanation for this phenomenon when firms can choose how muc…

We survey the literature on the effects of public sector outsourcing. Guided by theory, we systematically arrange services according to the type and magnitude of their contractibility problems. Taken…

This paper develops an improved test of economic convergence or divergence using time series methods. The usefulness of the method is illustrated in an analysis of the growth pattern between Chinese r…

In industries with network effects, incumbents’ installed bases create barriers to entry that discourage entrepreneurs from developing new innovations. Yet, entry is not the only commercialization rou…

This article surveys the literature and adds to the evidence on the impact of employment protection legislation on employment. While stringent employment protection contributes to less turnover and jo…

The literature on the relationship between the size of government and economic growth is full of seemingly contradictory findings. This conflict is largely explained by variations in definitions and t…

This paper explores the effects of deregulation and globalization on the dominant mode of corporate governance in Swedish public firms. The effects are multidimensional—the direction of change in corp…

This paper focuses on the ability of the labor market to correctly match heterogeneous workers to jobs within a given industry and the role that globalization plays in that process. Using matched work…