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Working Paper
Dynamic trade liberalization analysis: steady state, transitional and inter-industry effects
Despite their complexity, existing policy evaluation methods ignore many features of the real world that are pertinent for welfare analysis of trade policy. The main limitation of these technics is that they are static, which means they ignore important dynamic consequences of trade liberalization. This paper develops dynamic tools that overcome many of these weaknesses. I apply these technics to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). My analysis suggests that while the steady state gains from NAFTA are significant, the transitional costs associated with moving to the liberalized ...
Working Paper
North-South business cycles
This paper shows that the economic activity of the industrial North and developing South move together - when the North is above its trend, the South tends to be above its trend. We refer to this phenomenon as the "North-South business cycle." The paper develops a quantitative general equilibrium model of North-South trade that captures many cyclical features of North-South trade and production data. In particular, the high volatility of North-South terms of trade, and strong comovement of Northern and Southern activity. On the basis of this model we argue that North-South business cycles ...
Working Paper
Is there evidence of the new economy in the data?
The popular new economy theory argues that the U.S. economy can now grow at rates much greater than in the past without igniting higher levels of price inflation. At the core of the new economy paradigm is the belief that the U.S. Economy experienced an innovation in the 1990s that raised its so-called constant-inflation trend growth rate. According to its advocates, evidence of the new economy comes from the fact that the U.S. economy experienced relatively strong output growth and low levels of price inflation over the 1990s. This paper evaluates the new economy theory by formally testing ...
Newsletter
Is the U.S. current account sustainable?
This article clearly defines what economists mean by a sustainable current account. The author provides an estimate of the sustainable current account balance for the U.S. economy and assesses the implications of this estimate for the existing current account and level of foreign indebtedness.
Journal Article
Evidence of the North--South business cycle
This article examines the fluctuations of two regional economies: the developed, industrial goods exporting countries of the world ("North") and the developing, commodity exporting countries ("South"). The author finds that these very different regions have similar business cycle characteristics and that cyclical fluctuations in one region are positively correlated with fluctuations in other. Preliminary data analysis suggests that cyclical fluctuations in the South are caused by fluctuations that originate in the North.
Working Paper
What determines bilateral trade flows?
This paper undertakes an exhaustive search for robust determinants of international trade, where "robustness" is tested using three popular empirical methods. The paper is frankly atheoretical: our goal is solely to establish statistically robust relationships. Along the way, however, we relate our results to the empirical results obtained by prior researchers and to the received theory of international trade. We find that robust variables include a measure of the scale of factor endowments; fixed exchange rates; the level of development; and current account restrictions. Variables that are ...
Journal Article
A dynamic macroeconomic analysis of NAFTA
This article studies the impact of NAFTA on the three North American economies and a composite of their trading partners. The results suggest NAFTA will lead to welfare gains for all North American participants, with the greatest gains accruing to Mexico.
Working Paper
Why do countries pursue bilateral trade agreements: a case study of North America
Current trade theory argues that countries pursue bilateral trade agreements to escape from a terms-of-trade driven prisoners' dilemma. This paper offers an empirical test of the theory. Using simulation results from a quantitative trade model of North America I show that the non-cooperative and cooperative payoffs implicit in the CFTA and NAFTA take on the two essential elements of a prisoners' dilemma. First, my results suggest that irrespective of county size unilateral liberalization makes the liberalizing country worse off, while making its regional trading partner better off. Next, I ...
Working Paper
Determinants of business cycle comovement: a robust analysis
This paper investigates the determinants of business cycle comovement between countries. Our dataset includes over 100 countries, both developed and developing. We search for variables that are ?robust? in explaining comovement, using the approach of Leamer (1983). Variables considered are (i) bilateral trade between countries; (ii) total trade in each country; (iii) sectoral structure; (iv) similarity in export and import baskets; (v) factor endowments; and (vi) gravity variables. We find that bilateral trade is robust. However, two variables that the literature has argued are important for ...