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Abstract:
This paper provides a critical look at recent empirical work in international trade theory. The paper addresses the issue of why empirical work in international trade has perhaps not been as influential as it could have been. The paper also provides several suggestions on directions for future empirical research in international trade.

Abstract:
This paper combines the perspective of an international economist with that of an economic geographer to reflect on how and to what extent the Internet will affect the location of economic activity. Even after the very substantial transportation and communication improvements during the 20th Century, most exchanges of physical goods continue to take place within geographically-limited 'neighborhoods.' Previous rounds of infrastructure improvement always have had a double effect, permitting dispersion of certain routine activities but also increasing the complexity and time-dependence of productive activity, and thus making agglomeration more important. We argue that the Internet will produce more of the same forces for deagglomeration, but offsetting and possibly stronger tendencies toward agglomeration. Increasingly the economy is dependent on the transmission of complex uncodifiable messages, which require understanding and trust that historically have come from .face-to-face contact. This is not likely to be affected by the Internet, which allows long distance 'conversations' but not 'handshakes.'

Abstract:
Of the components of GDP, residential investment offers by far the best early warning sign of an oncoming recession. Since World War II we have had eight recessions preceded by substantial problems in housing and consumer durables. Housing did not give an early warning of the Department of Defense Downturn after the Korean Armistice in 1953 or the Internet Comeuppance in 2001, nor should it have. By virtue of its prominence in our recessions, it makes sense for housing to play a prominent role in the conduct of monetary policy. A modified Taylor Rule would depend on a long-term measure of inflation having little to do with the phase in the cycle, and, in place of Taylor's output gap, housing starts and the change in housing starts, which together form the best forward-looking indicator of the cycle of which I am aware. This would create pre-emptive anti-inflation policy in the middle of the expansions when housing is not so sensitive to interest rates, making it less likely that anti-inflation policies would be needed near the ends of expansions when housing is very interest rate sensitive, thus making our recessions less frequent and/or less severe.

Abstract:
Graphs that allow side by side comparisons of the six longer US expansions since 1950 suggest that these expansions have four distinct phases: (1) a high growth recovery during which the rate of unemployment declines to its pre-recession level, (2) a modest growth plateau during which the rate of unemployment is constant, (3) a growth spurt that drives unemployment down further and (4) a second plateau with modest growth and constant rate of unemployment. There have been only three expansions that have experienced the spurt and none has experienced a second spurt. These phases involve substantially different rates of GDP growth, but within each of these four phases GDP growth is largely unpredictable. Forecast accuracy thus comes mostly from understanding the transitions. This requires both data and economics. The economics takes the form of a predator/prey model of the cycle, where the prey are investment opportunities and the predators are entrepreneurs. A probit model of the transition into recession raises concerns about how much longer the aged Bush/Clinton expansion can last.

Abstract:
Economic growth in Europe and Asia and Latin America could have contri- buted in many different ways to lower wages and increased income inequality that the United States has been experiencing. One plausible model that links external product markets to internal labor markets is the Heckscher-Ohlin- amuelson general equilibrium model. This model operates over a time period long enough to allow complete detachment of workers and capital from their original sectors. According to this model the news of Asian growth is carried to the US labor markets by declines in prices of labor intensive tradables. These price reductions twist the labor demand curve, dictating lower real wages for unskilled workers who reside in communities with abundant unskilled labor but raising the wages for unskilled workers who are fortunate to live in communities inhabited mostly by skilled workers.

US relative producer prices of labor-intensive tradables declined in the 1970s by about 30%. These product price declines are compatible in the long run with real wage reductions totalling almost 40% for unskilled workers. In the 1980s however, changes in US producer prices worked in favor of these low-wage workers, raising their equilibrium wages by about 20%.

The sectoral bias of TFP growth did not favor low- or high-wage workers, but TFP changes did work strongly in favor of nonproduction workers and against production workers in the 1970s. If these TFP improvements had not generated any product price response, the TFP improvements in the 1970s call for a 100% increase in earnings of nonproduction workers and a 60% reduction in earnings of production workers.

Abstract:
Recent discussions of the effects of globalization and technological change on U.S. wages have suffered from inappropriate or missing references to the basic international trade theorems: The Factor Price Equalization Theorem, the Stolper-Samuelson Theorem and the Samuelson Duality Theorem. Until the theory is better understood, and until the theory and the estimates are sensibly linked, the jury should remain out. This paper gives examples of the misuse of the international micro theory linking technological change and globalization to the internal labor market. This international micro theory serves as a foundation for a reexamination of the NBER Trade and Immigration Data Base that describes output, employment and investment in 450 4-digit SIC U.S. manufacturing sectors beginning in 1970. Estimates of the impact of technological change on income inequality are shown to vary widely depending on the form of the model and the choice of data subsets, but uniformly the estimates suggest that technological change reduced income inequality not increased it. But the data separation of workers into 'production' and 'non-production' workers has little association with skill levels, and these data probably cannot be used to study income inequality.

Abstract:
Monthly US data on payroll employment, civilian employment, industrial production and the unemployment rate are used to define a recession-dating algorithm that nearly perfectly reproduces the NBER official peak and trough dates. The only substantial point of disagreement is with respect to the NBER November 1973 peak. The algorithm prefers September 1974. In addition, this algorithm indicates that the data through June 2008 do not yet exceed the recession threshold, and will do so only if things get much worse.

Abstract:
No abstract is available for this paper.

Abstract:
This paper embeds variable effort into a traditional multi-sector model. Effort enters a production function like total-factor-productivity and on the assumption that effort doesn't affect capital depreciation, the capital-cost savings from high effort operations are passed on to workers. The labor market thus offers a set of contracts with higher wages compensating for higher effort. Among the implications of the model are: The capital savings from effort are greatest in the capital-intensive sectors where the high-effort high-wage contracts occur; Communities inhabited by industrious workers have high returns to capital and comparative advantage in capital-intensive goods; Capital accumulation in a closed economy causes reductions in effort; Capital accumulation in an open economy creates new high-wage high-effort jobs and higher effort levels; Price declines of labor intensive goods twist the wage-eff offer curve reward for hard work; A deterioration in the terms of trade causes an economy- wide reduction in effort; A minimum wage does not cause unemployment. It forces effort in local services up high enough to support the higher wage. This acts like an increase in labor supply which increases the return on capital. A minimum wage by forcing greater effort increases GDP and reduces earnings inequality, but it makes workers worse off since they prefer the the contracts offered by the free market.

Abstract:
The net imports of labor embodied in international trade has been a fairly small and stable share of the US labor force. From this some conclude that trade has not been a major contributor to the income inequality trends. This is a non sequitur. The labor embodied in trade is jointly determined by tastes, technologies, factor supplies and the external goods market. Although it is impossible to use factor contents to disentangle trade from technology, the factor contents can be used to suggest the change of earnings shares if the country were to close down external trade entirely. However, this is a proper application of factor contents only if tastes and technologies are log-linear, if trade is balanced and if foreign input intensities are used to compute factor contents of non-competing imports. Factor contents are virtually useless if technologies and tastes are not log-linear, or if the external deficit is substantial and variable. Factor contents do not tell us anything about earnings levels as opposed to shares. They also do not inform us of the impact of partial trade barriers that change relative product prices but do not completely eliminate trade. In other words, the title question is rhetorical.

Abstract:
A free trade agreement supports global free trade since trade barriers tend to divert trade in favor of members, but not reduce imports. The term: 'mutual assured deterrence' is used to refer to a regional free trade association that has the feature that no member can gain individually from the imposition of a barrier against a non- member. Mutual assured deterrence is shown to be possible for a surprisingly rich set of partners. A customs union is compatible with global free trade if the vast majority of trade takes place naturally within the confines of the association. A customs union that is likely to have this property would combine countries to form a nearly exact economic replica of the globe. The economic combination of Mexico and the United States doesn't form a replica of the global economy because, compared with Asia, North America has relatively high capital per worker even after adding the Mexican workforce. However, NAFTA does seem to have the property of mutual assured deterrence, and may for that reason amount to a commitment to global free trade as well as regional free trade.

Abstract:
In this paper we explore the hypothesis that the Swedish malaise comes from the interaction of the Swedish welfare state with changes in the global marketplace. External commerce can expose Swedish workers in exporting and import-competing industries to competition from low-wage foreign workers that is incompatible with an extensive welfare system. The Heckscher-Ohlin theory that is the foundation of this paper allows a high-wage equilibrium without government intervention even though there is increasing competition from low-wage suppliers, if capital is abundant and if production is concentrated on the most capital intensive products. Then the unskilled workers can be employed at high wages either in the tradables or nontradables sector. However, Swedish investment rates have not been high enough to maintain the position that it had two decades ago. This we express in the form of the Heckscher-Ohlin Crowding Hypothesis: Swedish difficulties in its interactions with the global marketplace come from an eroding lead in capital abundance. Though losing its distinctiveness in capital abundance, Sweden remains well supplied with soft-wood forests. Although contributing substantially to GDP forest resources can also imply lower wages for unskilled workers and greater income inequality. A country with abundant forest resources and produce capital intensive products as well as pulp and paper, but a country with more moderate supplies of capital can find much of its capital deployed in pulp and paper and end up with a mix of tradables including relatively labor-intensive products. This product mix may dictate relatively low wages for unskilled workers since the marginal unskilled worker may be employed in sectors which globally award low wages.

Abstract:
No abstract is available for this paper.

Abstract:
We provide evidence that US workers face a wage-effort offer curve with the high-wage high-effort jobs occurring in the capital intensive sectors. We find that real wage offers rose at every level of effort during the 1960's, a shift which is consistent with a decline in the rental cost of capital. During the 1970's, when relative prices of labor-intensive goods declined, the wage-effort offer curve twisted, offering lower pay for the low-paid jobs in the labor-intensive sectors but higher pay for the high-paid jobs in the capital-intensive sectors. In the 1980's, workers at every wage level began to work more hours for the same weekly wage. This we loosely attribute either to the increasing cost of non-wage benefits, especially health care, or to the introduction of new equipment. In studying the wage-effort offer curve rate of unionization, education, and rent sharing.

Abstract:
Weights are found for weighted least squares estimates such that a selected coefficient (a) changes by one standard deviation or (b) changes in sign. The length of the vector of weight changes is equal to the usual OLS standard error divided by the White-corrected standard errors. Thus the White-corrected standard errors can help decide if it is necessary to adjust the location of the confidence sets to correct for heteroscedasticity. The vector of weight changes is similar to the effect of omitting observations, one at a time. The sensitivity diagnostics of Belsley, Kuh and Welsch are therefore linked with heteroscedasticity issues.

Abstract:
No abstract is available for this paper.

Abstract:
Recent changes in patterns of international trade and growth have rekindled interest in the relationships among trade, growth, and the international distribution of income. Three alternative models can serve as a theoretical foundation for an empirical analysis of these relationships. The first is the standard Heckscher-Ohlin-Samuelson (Ho) trade model with equalnumbers of factors and goods and incomplete specialization. The second model allows complete specialization and more goods than factors. The third model posits short run capital immobility. Each of these models has quite different implications for the determination of wage levels and growth rates.The conclusions that we draw from this research are rather mixed. Each of the models perform well on certain criteria and poorly on others. While the standard HO model clearly fails to satisfy certain cross-equation constraints, national endowments are remarkably good predictors of the locus of international production. There are, however, significant nonlinearities in the relationship between factor allocations and national endowments. Such nonlinearities are predicted by the uneven version of the HO model. At odds with both of these models is our finding that lagged values of inputs providean important explanation of current factor demands. Such correlations are suggested by the adjustment cost model.

Abstract:
No abstract is available for this paper.

Abstract:
Most studies of the economies of Eastern Europe by Western analysts depend substantially on Western data and Western attitudes. Usually this dependence is implicit and concealed. An explicit and transparent treatment may yield better results, both for the individual analyst and for the profession overall. This article proposes and illustrates an econometric method for pooling Western and Eastern data. The pooled estimates depend on doubt about the Western attitudes, on the degree of experimental contamination in Western and Eastern data and on the similarity of Western and Eastern structures. The method is illustrated by a study of the determinants of the growth rates of developed and developing countries.

Abstract:
Rigorous analysis of the previously centrally planned economies (PCPEs) is one of the most important but at the same time difficult tasks currently facing macroeconomists. We develop applied techniques appropriate to situations typically faced by Western analysts of PCPEs, as well as by development economists more generally, involving data which is low in both quality and quantity and doubt concerning the direct applicability of Western theories and ideas, experience and data. We apply these techniques to estimate growth equations for a group of PCPEs and for groups of developed and developing economies.