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Journal Article
Terrorism and the resilience of cities
The September 11 attacks in New York and Washington have forced Americans to confront the fact that to live or work in a large city is to be at greater risk of large-scale terrorism. What do these risks, and the public perception of them, imply for cities in general and the future of New York City in particular? In this article, the authors begin their exploration of this issue by examining why cities exist in the first place. To conduct their analysis, they simulate two key theoretical models of economic geography, using data that approximate the characteristics of a major U.S. city as well ...
Report
U.S. wages in general equilibrium: the effects of prices, technology and factor supplies, 1963-1991
Wage inequality in the United States has increased in the past two decades, and most researchers suspect that the main causes are changes in technology, international competition, and factor supplies. The relative importance of these causes in explaining wage inequality is important for policy making and is controversial, partly because there has been no research which has directly estimated the joint impact of these different causes. In this paper, we view wages as arising out of a competitive general equilibrium where goods prices, technology and factor supplies jointly determine outputs ...
Working Paper
Distance, time, and specialization
Time is money, and distance matters. We model the interaction of these truisms, and show the implications for global specialization and trade: products where timely delivery is important will be produced near the source of final demand, where wages will be higher as a result. In the model, timely delivery is important because it allows retailers to respond to fluctuating final demand without holding costly inventories, and timely delivery is only possible from nearby locations. Using a unique dataset that allows us to measure the retail demand for timely delivery, we show that the sources of ...
Working Paper
Factor supplies and specialization in the world economy
A core prediction of the Heckscher-Ohlin theory is that countries specialize in goods in which they have a comparative advantage, and that the source of comparative advantage is differences in relative factor supplies. To examine this theory, we use the most extensive dataset available and document the pattern of industrial specialization and factor endowment differences in a broad sample of rich and developing countries over a lengthy period (1970-92). Next, we develop an empirical model of specialization based on factor endowments, allowing for unmeasurable technological differences and ...
Report
International trade and American wages in general equilibrium, 1967-1995
In the last quarter century, wage inequality has increased dramatically in the United States. At the same time, the United States has become more integrated into the world economy, relative prices of final goods have changed, the capital stock has more than doubled, and the labor force has become steadily more educated. This paper estimates a flexible, empirical, general equilibrium model of wage determination in an attempt to sort out the connections between these trends. Aggregate data on prices and quantities of imports, outputs, and factor supplies are constructed from disaggregate ...
Report
Technology, factor supplies, and international specialization: estimating the neoclassical model
The standard neoclassical model of trade theory predicts that international specialization will be jointly determined by cross-country differences in relative factor endowments and relative technology levels. This paper uses economic theory to specify an empirical model of specialization consistent with the neoclassical explanation. According to the empirical model, a sector's share in GDP depends on both relative factor supplies and relative technology differences, and the estimated parameters of the model have a close and clear connection to theoretical parameters. The model is estimated ...
Report
Estimation of cross-country differences in industry production functions.
International trade economists typically assume that there are no cross-country differences in industry total factor productivity (TFP). In contrast, this paper finds large and persistent TFP differences across a group of industrialized countries in the 1980s. The paper calculates TFP indices, and statistically examines the sources of the observed large TFP differences across countries. Two hypotheses are examined to account for TFP differences: constant returns to scale production with country-specific technological differences, and industry-level scale economies with identical technology in ...
Report
Cross-country comparisons of industry total factor productivity: theory and evidence
International trade economists typically assume that TFP for each industry is the same in every country. This paper casts doubt on this hypothesis, finding large and persistent TFP differences across countries. The paper considers measurement issues in depth, and a methodology for international TFP comparisons is described. This methodology is applied to a dataset on prices, inputs, and outputs for a group of industrialized countries in the 1980s. The paper finds that the United States was the TFP leader in machinery and equipment during the 1980s, with Japan slightly behind. These ...
Journal Article
The impact of the Asia crisis on U.S. industry: an almost-free lunch?
Despite predictions to the contrary, the Asia crisis had only modest overall effects on the United States. The expected surge in import volumes did not materialize and the drop in demand for U.S. exports was not enough to slow the nation's robust economy. Nevertheless, these overall effects could have masked other, larger effects in particularly vulnerable U.S. industries. To examine this possibility, the author conducts a sector-level analysis of the turmoil's impact. He concludes that, with the exception of the steel industry, imports from Asia do not compete directly with U.S. products. ...