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The"New Open Economy Macroeconomics"argues that: (a) non-monetary factors have gained importance in explaining exchange rate volatility, and (b) trade and financial openness may have a potential role of mitigating and/or amplifying real and nominal shocks to real exchange rates. The goal of the present paper is to examine the ability of trade and financial openness to exacerbate or mitigate real exchange rate volatility. The authors collected information on the real effective exchange rate, its fundamentals, and (outcome and policy measures of) trade and financial openness for a sample of industrial and developing countries for the period 1975-2005. Using instrumental variables techniques, the analysis finds that: (a) High real exchange rate volatility is the result of highly volatile productivity shocks, and sharp oscillations in monetary and fiscal policy shocks. (b) Countries more integrated with international markets of goods and services tend to display more stable real exchange rate fluctuations. (c) Financial openness seems to amplify the fluctuations in real exchange rates. (d) The composition of trade and capital flows plays a role in explaining the smoothing properties of trade and financial openness. Although the former is mainly driven by manufacturing trade, the latter depends on the share of debt (and equity) in total foreign liabilities. (e) Financial openness would attenuate (magnify) real exchange rate volatility, the greater the share of equity (debt) in foreign liabilities. (f) The composition of flows also matters for explaining the smoothing properties of trade and financial openness in periods of currency crisis.

This paper studies the impact of trade liberalization when monopolistically competitive and oligopolistic firms coexist in the same market. The model is characterized by a group of multi-product firms which behave strategically and take their impact on market aggregates into account (e.g. the average price, and total output) and by a monopolistically competitive fringe. This difference in behavior leads large firms to charge higher markups. Conditions are derived for the coexistence of both types of firms: heterogeneity in production efficiency, captured by economies of scope for large firms, appears as a necessary condition for them to coexist at equilibrium. Turning to international trade, free trade increases social welfare, as both large and small firms become more competitive. However, when only large firms are able to cover the fixed costs to export, bilateral trade liberalization fosters the exit of small firms, and increases product variety, but it also lowers consumer surplus through a higher average price. Social welfare increases under linear or isoelastic demand but is generally ambiguous.

This paper tests an implication of the hypothesis that hegemons provide increased global stability and thus promote international commerce. Specifically, we measure the influence of naval power projections on global trade during the latter 19th and early 20th centuries, a time of relative peace and robust commercial activity. We use archival data on the navies of Britain, France, the United States and Germany, capturing longitudinal measures of ship deployment, tonnage, and ship personnel. First we develop an empirical naval arms race model, and demonstrate that the navies of Britain and France in particular responded rigorously to each other. We then use our estimates of naval power projected around the world by Britain and France to measure their effects on bilateral trade in a panel-data gravity model. Results indicate that while navies had some positive impact on their own nation's trade, other nations' trade suffered. Our results show that rather than bolster globalization, the first global arms race damaged commercial interests and lowered trade potential around the world.

This paper infers the terms of trade effects of free trade agreements (FTAs) implemented in the 1990s. We estimate large FTA effects on bilateral trade volume in 2 digit manufacturing goods from 1990–2002, using panel data gravity methods to resolve two way causality. The terms of trade changes implied by these volume effects are deduced for 40 countries plus a rest-of-the-world aggregate using an endowments general equilibrium model. Some countries gain over 5% of real manufacturing income, some lose less than 0.3%. Global efficiency of manufactures trade rises 0.9% based on a distance function measure of iceberg melting.

In this paper I quantitatively address the role of trade barriers in explaining why prices of services relative to tradables are positively correlated with levels of development across countries. I argue that trade barriers play a crucial role in shaping the cross-country pattern of specialization across many tradable goods. I construct a multi-country, general equilibrium model of trade and derive tractable predictions that show how specialization affects relative prices. I calibrate the model to match the patterns of prices, levels of development, and bilateral trade across 103 countries. Through counterfactuals I find that removing trade barriers eliminates more than half of the gap in the relative price of services between rich and poor countries with only a minimal systematic effect on the absolute price of tradables.

This paper models interstate trade patterns of U.S. states using a partial equilibrium trade model. The theoretical model deviates from the existing gravity literature by employing trade estimations in ratio form, with the ratio of imports from different sources, rather than the level of bilateral trade between two locations. Using this specification, together with considering the production side through technology levels, the elasticity of substitution across goods, the elasticity of substitution across varieties of each good, and the good specific elasticity of distance measures are all identified in the empirical analysis, which is not the case in gravity type studies. The ratio transformation also effectively eliminates any proportional distribution margin, international trade, or overstatement of distance measures from the theoretical trade equation. Compared to empirical international trade literature, the elasticity of substitution is estimated to be lower, while the elasticity of distance is estimated to be higher intranationally.

This paper reexamines the GATT/WTO membership efiect on bilateral trade ∞ows, using nonparametric methods including pair-matching, permutation tests, and a Rosenbaum (2002) sensitivity analysis. Together, these methods provide an estimation framework that is robust to misspeciflcation biases, allows general forms of heterogeneous treatment efiects, and addresses potential hidden selection biases. This is in contrast to most conventional parametric studies on this issue. Our results suggest large GATT/WTO trade-promoting efiects, robust to various restricted matching criteria, alternative indicators for GATT/WTO involvement, different matching methodologies, non-random incidence of positive trade ∞ows, and inclusion of multilateral resistance terms.

This paper develops an approach for quantifying the importance of different sources of comparative advantage for country welfare. To explain patterns of specialization, I present a multi-country trade model that extends Eaton and Kortum (2002) to predict industry trade ows. In this framework, comparative advantage is determined by the interaction of country and industry characteristics, with countries specializing in industries whose specific production needs they are best able to meet with their factor endowments and institutional strengths. I estimate the model parameters on a large dataset of bilateral trade flows, presenting results from both a baseline OLS approach, as well as a simulated method of moments (SMM) procedure to account for the prevalence of zero trade fl ows in the data. I apply the model to explore various quantitative questions, in particular how much distance, Ricardian productivity, factor endowments, and institutional conditions each matter for country welfare in the global trade equilibrium. I also illustrate the shift in industry composition and the accompanying welfare gains in policy experiments where a country raises its factor endowments or improves the quality of its institutions.

A classic argument for a fixed exchange rate is its promotion of trade. Empirical support for this, however, is mixed. While one branch of research consistently shows a small negative effect of exchange rate volatility on trade, another, more recent, branch presents evidence of a large positive impact of currency unions on trade. This paper helps resolve this disconnect. Our results, which use a new data-based classification of fixed exchange rate regimes, show a large, significant effect of a fixed exchange rate on bilateral trade between a base country and a country that pegs to it. These results suggest an economically relevant role for exchange rate regimes in trade determination since a significant amount of world trade is conducted between countries with fixed exchange rates.

This paper investigates the impact of restricting bilateral trade imbalances in a three country, three good model. Bilateral trade balances matter because, in the Nash equilibrium, each country will impose tariffs on countries with whom they have bilateral deficits or promote trade with countries with whom they have bilateral surpluses. All countries lose from a Nash country-bashing war. Each country loses from the unilateral elimination of its bilateral imbalances. But a country can gain from a bilateral agreement with its deficit partner provided that country has a surplus with a country devoted to free trade.