Globalization

How does competition affect innovation? We address this question by using a novel approach to measure quality—an important component of innovation—using highly disaggregated product data for a large set of countries. Constructing an internationally comparable measure of quality enables us to separate the effect of reducing import tariffs, our measure of competition, on quality upgrading from other country level differences in competitive environments, and product demand shocks.

This paper examines the relation between ownership, corporate form, and innovation for a cross-section of private and publicly traded innovating firms in the US and 15 European countries. A striking novel observation emerges from our analysis: while most innovating firms in the US are publicly traded conglomerates, a substantial fraction of innovation is concentrated in private firms and in business groups in continental European countries.

We empirically analyze the illicit trade in cultural property and antiques, taking advantage of different reporting incentives between source and destination countries. We thus generate a measure of illicit trafficking in these goods based on the difference between imports recorded in United States' customs data and the (purportedly identical) trade as recorded by customs authorities in exporting countries.

This paper studies the value of external commitment to policy reforms in the case of WTO/GATT accessions. The accessions often entail reforms that go beyond narrowly defined trade liberalization, and have to overcome fierce resistance in the acceding countries, as reflected in protracted negotiations. We study the growth and investment consequences of WTO/GATT accessions, with attention to a possible selection bias. We find that the accessions tend to raise income, but only for those countries that were subject to rigorous accession procedures.

In this article, we dissect changes in the composition of Indian imports following its 1991 trade liberalization to illustrate the potential scope for previously unavailable inputs to bolster the performance of domestic firms. The analysis reveals that trade reform spurred imports of previously unavailable products and varieties in many products that arguably can be characterized as important inputs for manufacturing firms. New imported inputs in large extent originated from more advanced countries and new imported varieties exhibited higher unit values relative to existing imports.

Two leading scholars of business and finance introduce a bold idea for the world's poorest countries. Over the past twenty years, more citizens in China and India have raised themselves out of poverty than anywhere else at any time in history. They accomplished this through the local business sector—the leading source of prosperity for all rich countries. In most of Africa and other poor regions, the business sector is weak, but foreign aid continues to fund government and NGOs.

The literature on the benefits and costs of financial globalization for developing countries has exploded in recent years, but along many disparate channels with a variety of apparently conflicting results. There is still little robust evidence of the growth benefits of broad capital account liberalization, but a number of recent papers in the finance literature report that equity market liberalizations do significantly boost growth.

This paper studies the joint impact of corruption on the entry mode and volume of inward foreign direct investment (FDI) using a unique firm-level data set. We find that corruption not only reduces inward FDI, but also shifts the ownership structure towards joint ventures. The latter finding supports the view that corruption increases the value of using a local partner to cut through the bureaucratic maze. However, R&D intensive firms are found to favor sole ownership.