Broadly, my interests are in the fields of trade, labour and development. My research interests include growth spillovers, gravity models of trade, the interactions between skilled and unskilled labour, skill biased technical change in developing countries and labour demand.
Articles
Exports and International Logistics (with Phil Manners and Ben Nelson), Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics (2013)
Do better international logistics reduce trade costs, raising a developing country's exports? Yes, but the...
The impact of North‐South and South‐South trade agreements on bilateral trade (with Laia Cirera i Crivillé), Review of International Economics (2013)
Free trade agreements (FTAs) lead to a rise in bilateral trade even if the signatories...
Trade Flows, Multilateral Resistance and Firm Heterogeneity (with Ben Nelson), Review of Economics and Statistics (2013)
We present a gravity model that accounts for multilateral resistance, firm heterogeneity and country selection...
A Template for Analyzing and Projecting Labor Market Indicators, IMF Technical Notes and Manuals (2012)
This note is a reference guide for the unemployment template, an econometric tool that allows...
Marshall's Rules with Aggregate Inputs, Economics Bulletin (2011)
We establish the formal link between the separability of inputs in a production function and...
Books
Are Skilled and Unskilled Labour Complements or Substitutes?: Skill Supply, Cheap Capital, and Unskilled Labour Demand, Are Skilled and Unskilled Labour Complements or Substitutes?: Skill Supply, Cheap Capital, and Unskilled Labour Demand (2008)
Would more skilled labour lower demand for those who remain unskilled? Could cheaper capital decrease...
Book chapters
Middle East and North Africa Oil Exporters: Increase Resilience and Create Private-Sector Jobs, Middle East and Central Asia Regional Economic Outlook (2012)
The region's oil-exporting countries have been able to use the proceeds from booming oil prices...
Transport Costs and International Trade (with Anthony J. Venables), Handbook of Transport Economics (2010)
The first issue we study is the impact of transport costs on the volume and...
Press or briefs
SOUTH AFRICA: Medium-term Budget signals no shift left, Oxford Analytica Daily Brief (2009)
The increased deficit projection is largely due to lower-than-anticipated tax revenues, rather than a deliberate...
AFRICA: Does Africa trade too little?, Oxford Analytica Daily Brief (2008)
Once distance to markets and especially GDP are accounted for, the typical African country does...
AFRICA: Transit needs more than infrastructure boost, Oxford Analytica Daily Brief (2008)
Many organisations are making money and skills available for transport infratsructure projects. Indications are that...
SOUTH AFRICA: State considers 'Harvard Group' policies, Oxford Analytica Daily Brief (2008)
The diagnostics approach has infiltrated the thinking of government officials and development practitioners, but the...
Unpublished papers
The endogenous skill bias of technical change in developing countries (2012)
Globalization and skill supply affect the extent to which technology adoption in developing countries favors...
Factory Europe? Brainier but not brawnier (with Caroline Freund) (2011)
Abstract: While intermediates comprise the majority of total goods trade in the EU, their share...
How integrated is SADC ? trends in intra-regional and extra-regional trade flows and policy, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper Series (2011)
Do Southern African Development Community countries trade enough with each other and with the rest...
The Trade Performance of the Middle East and North Africa, World Bank Middle East and North Africa Working Paper Series (2011)
This paper characterizes the trade performance of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) over...
Do managers and experts agree? A comparison of alternative sources of trade facilitation data (2010)
This paper constructs country-level aggregates of trade facilitation measures from firm-level responses in the Enterprise...