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...

This paper proposes a new way of displaying and analyzing macroeconomic time series to form recession forecasts. The proposed data displays contain the last three years of each expansion. These allow observers to see for themselves what is different about the last year before recession. Based on...

This paper provides theory and evidence that worker effort has played an important role in the increase in income inequality in the United States between 1980 and 2016. The theory suggests that a worker needs to exert effort enough to pay the rental value of the physical and human capital, thus...

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...

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...

This paper analyzes the extent to which education will be subsidized when the subsidy rate is determined by majority voting. The analysis takes place in a framework where education is a discrete decision and all individuals would like to obtain an education because of its effect on future...

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...