Topics in Empirical International Economics

Book excerpt: In this timely volume emanating from the National Bureau of Economic Research's program in international economics, leading economists address recent developments in three important areas. The first section of the book focuses on international comparisons of output and prices, and includes papers that present new measures of product market integration, new methodology to infer relative factor price changes from quantitative data, and an ongoing capital stock measurement project. The next section features articles on international trade, including such significant issues as deterring child labor exploitation in developing countries, exchange rate regimes, and mapping U. S. comparative advantage across various factors. The book concludes with research on multinational corporations and includes a discussion of the long-debated issue of whether growth of production abroad substitutes for or is complementary to production growth at home. The papers in the volume are dedicated to Robert E. Lipsey, who for more than a half century at the NBER, contributed significantly to the broad field of empirical international economics.