The Global Forum website tries to keep track of the ever changing landscape of trade analysis, measurement of trade and trade statistics. The site keeps a database of links to over 150 relevant publications, reports, articles and speeches.
The full list of featured publications can be found HERE.
Using confidential firm-level data from the United States in 2002, we show that exporting firms charge prices for narrowly defined goods that differ substantially with the characteristics of firms and export markets. We control for selection into export markets using a three-stage estimator. We have three main results. First, we find that highly productive and skill-intensive firms charge higher prices, while capital-intensive firms charge lower prices... more »
Services now constitute about 70 percent of global GDP.2 Moreover, foreign direct investment (FDI) flows have shifted toward services, and now constitute almost half of total FDI flows in developing countries.3 Recognizing their importance and the need to have special rules to treat trade in services, the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) was incorporated into the World Trade Organization (WTO) when it was formed in the mid-1990s... more »
New goods play a central role in many trade and growth models. We use detailed trade and firm-level data from a large developing economy—India—to investigate the relationship between declines in trade costs, the imports of intermediate inputs and domestic firm product scope. We estimate substantial static gains from trade through access to new imported inputs... more »
The global motor vehicle industry is rapidly steering away from the internal combustion engine. Electric vehicles are increasingly attractive for their potential to reduce greenhouse gases and decrease dependence on oil. By 2020, more than half of new vehicle sales will likely consist of hybrid-electric, plug-in hybrid, and all-electric models. For automakers, the key to this huge shift will be lithium-ion batteries… more »
We investigate numerous predictions regarding the relationship between rms' pro- ductivity and the geographic extensive margins of trade in both goods and services. A unique dataset combining French rms' production information with country- product level information on services and goods imports and exports allows us to examine numerous hypotheses... more »
Because economies are built of millions of firms and trading relationships, individual companies and export channels should not matter. Yet aggregate shocks do not explain volatility very well. Common shocks (to whole countries or global industries) explain only 45% of the variations. The data show that the picture of trade as millions of links is inaccurate; in fact, flows are extremely concentrated. A widely held view is that trade lowers volatility: exporting to more markets means greater diversification. But more foreign trade exposes economies more to the fortunes of large firms, since they trade disproportionately. more »
Discussions of international trade often focus on aggregate trade flows, but it is firms that trade, not countries. This column presents evidence from Norwegian export data showing that larger exporters have more customers and greater dispersion in customer size. Moreover, exporters with many customers tend to sell to importers with few suppliers. These stylised facts are captured by a model in which finding a buyer is costly. The model’s prediction that export responses are amplified in destinations with less buyer dispersion is confirmed in the data. more »
