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Focus on international trade for 27th BSE Lecture by Elhanan Helpman
The 27th BSE Lecture was delivered at Banc Sabadell Auditorium on May 2, 2013 by Prof. Elhanan Helpman (Harvard University and CIFAR). The title of Prof. Helpman's lecture was "International Trade: Firm-Level Perspectives."
Professor Helpman explained that tradition approaches to research in international trade emphasized intersectoral trade flows. However, as new firm-level data became available, the possibility of new micro-level insights has emerged. The rapid changes in the world economy have set an equally fast pace for scholars working on this topic.
"Research on international trade and investment has evolved in tandem with changes in the global economy, and it has been a race between scholarship and events," he said during his lecture.
"The firm-level approach that has emerged in recent years constitutes a second major revolution in the field," Prof. Helpman said. "The interplay between theory and empirical analysis, using novel analytical models and rich data sets, has been central to this enterprise. And the excitement is not yet over!"