This paper investigates the role of structural reforms – privatization, financial reform and trade liberalization– as determinants of FDI inflows based on newly constructed dataset on structural reforms for 19 Latin American and 25 Eastern European countries between 1989 and 2004. Our main finding is a strong empirical relationship from reforms to FDI, in particular, from financial liberalizati...

We generalize the Diamond–Mirrlees production efficiency theorem, that there should be no taxes on sectors producing pure intermediate goods, to an environment with political economy constraints. In our economy, allocations and taxation are decided by self-interested politicians without the power to commit to future policies. The Diamond–Mirrlees production efficiency result holds even when pol...

I study how trade affects urbanization and real income. To this end, exploit large-scale exogenous changes in stemming from the redrawing of Hungary’s borders after First World War. show that counties near new border decreased significantly relative to farther away. rationalize reduced-form finding a spatial model which benefits trading drive agglomeration around locations where activity takes ...

In a second best environment, the optimal policy choice sometimes follows first best rules, as described in a number of scattered works. This paper presents a formal general argument which allows to unify much of the literature. It lays down the information structure and separability assumptions under which the results hold in a variety of setups, with extensions to preference heterogeneity and...

ABSTRACT We examine how exposure to international tax competition affects domestic firms’ employment. Consistent with prior work, we find evidence that reductions in foreign rates affect the competitive environment via increases import and investment foreign-owned subsidiaries. posit these changes can cause managers reduce their employment levels. our expectation, relative decreases negatively ...

We use microdata collected at the border and store to characterize price impact of recent US trade policy on importers, exporters, consumers. At border, import tariff pass-through is much higher than exchange rate pass-through. Chinese exporters did not lower their dollar prices by much, despite appreciation dollar. By contrast, significantly lowered affected foreign retaliatory tariffs. In sto...

The paper provides an ex-post analysis of the determinants within-country regional heterogeneity labour market impact COVID-19. By focussing on first wave pandemic in four largest euro area economies, it finds that propagation economic across regions cannot be explained by spread infections only. Instead, a region’s structure is significant driver observed heterogeneity. Moreover, our results s...

To quantify trade frictions, we examine multiproduct exporters. We build a flexible general-equilibrium model and estimate market entry costs using Brazilian firm-product-destination data under rich demand access cost shocks. Our estimates show that additional products farther from firm’s core competency come at higher production costs, but there are substantive economies of scope in costs. Mar...

We study the relationship between domestic-demand shocks and exports using data for Spanish manufacturing firms in 2002–2013. Exploiting plausibly exogenous geographical variation caused by Great Recession, we find that whose domestic sales declined more experienced a larger increase export flows, controlling firms’ supply determinants. This result illustrates capacity of markets to counteract ...