Research

 

Whither American Manufacturing.  In progress. Slides from a brief non-technical presentation here. 

Estimating the Impact of Currency Unions on Trade Using a Dynamic Gravity Framework. Feb., 2012. The line: The early large estimates of currency unions on trade were driven by omitted variables including warfare and communist takeovers, and are not robust to controlling for dynamics. Slides here. 

The Diffusion of Development: Along Genetic or Geographic Lines? Dec., 2011. With Ju Hyun. The line: climatic distance to the US predicts development, genetic distance does not. 

Why Isn't the Whole World Developed? Evidence from Similarity in Soil Suitability. The line: Combining a human capital-augmented Malthusian growth model with the insights of Kamarck/Crosby/Diamond can potentially explain a large fraction of comparative development, including why latitude and development are so highly correlated. 

History, Culture and Trade: A Dynamic Gravity Approach. 2010. The appendix is here, the post-war data (in Stata 11) here, and the do-file here. The line: trade costs determine relative prices, relative prices determine production and consumption baskets, and both of these are persistent. Hence, trade costs play a role in cultural formation and which contributes to hysterisis in trade. Thus history matters for trade. Interesting fact: Bilateral trade shares in 1870 can predict trade shares in 2000, even while controlling for the standard gravity arguments such as GDP, geographic variables, etc… 

Here is my profile on VoxEU, and here is a piece written with David Jacks, Chris Meissner, and Dennis Novy on the dramatic decline in trade during the Great Recession. The data (in stata 9 format) is here.