To examine how changes in relative national prices affect trade flows, this study estimates the impact of changes in industry-specific effective real exchange rates on industry-level trade balances, exports, and imports. We analyze the variations in industry-specific intra-industry trade and vertical specialization, which may both govern the long-run relationship between real exchange rates and trade flows. We employ sample information from 13 manufacturing industries across five Asian countries from 2001 to 2015. Rather than country-level aggregate measures, we use disaggregated industry-specific real exchange rates, which provide better measures of relative national prices and may help to uncover different responses that are masked by aggregate data. Fixed-effect estimations reveal that greater price competitiveness, as measured by depreciation in industry-specific effective real exchange rates, increases industry-level trade balances. We find that the elasticity of industry-level trade balances with respect to industry-specific real exchange rates declines as vertical specialization increases. There is also some limited evidence that this elasticity increases as intra-industry trade increases. Taken together, our findings suggest that global supply chains are more important than intra-industry trade in examining the response of trade balances to real exchange rate changes. Importantly, these heterogeneous impacts imply that policies regarding exchange rate management may be of limited potency and will affect different industries in different ways.

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Conflicts hinder international trade. Political agreements that restrain conflicts and remove sanctions may contribute positively to exporting and importing activities. In this study, we examine the effects of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, commonly known as Iran Nuclear Deal, on Iran's non-oil exports. Employing a dynamic panel model, we find a significant increase in the growth rate of industry-level exports following the removal of nuclear-related sanctions, resulting from this political agreement. In particular, the exports of industries that have relatively low shares in Iran's non-oil exports grow significantly faster than industries with relatively high shares in those exports. Our findings suggest that even a short-lived political agreement could have significant positive effects on exporting activities in middle income countries.

International sanctions have significant economic effects with long-lasting negative consequences for human development. However, academic research on the gendered effects of sanctions is scarce. In fact, most work on sanctions has been either gender neutral or gender blind. This article examines the labor market effects of economic and noneconomic sanctions, imposed by the United States and the United Nations, on male and female employment in manufacturing industries in Iran. The empirical analysis is based on four-digit industry-level employment data from 102 manufacturing industries between 1995 and 2014.Our main findings suggest that international sanctions have disproportionate effects on male and female employment. In particular, we find that sanctions hurt female employment significantly more than male employment. This effect is further compounded in industries that are more capital intensive, where labor compensation has a relatively low share in value added. Furthermore, in industries with relatively high reliance on imported inputs, female employment suffers more from sanctions.

In choosing where to invest, firms seek out information on a set of possible locations. Information asymmetries may make country visibility particularly important in decisions to locate investment abroad. We develop a country visibility index based on international news stories in The Economist, and show that broad country visibility is at least as important in attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) as other specific investment promotion activities or proxies for information frictions. Controlling for standard gravity model determinants of FDI, we find that greater visibility of developing countries, in particular lower middle-and low-income countries, increases the investment that they receive from US multinational corporations. The good news is that transparency can work. When information is relevant, standardised and public, it fosters intelligent decision-making.