This paper quantifies the relative importance of the different channels of CPI responsiveness to exchange rates and import prices across 21 industrialized economies. The paper provides new and rich cross-country and cross-industry details on the sensitivity to exchange rates of distribution margins; the extent of imported inputs use in different categories of consumption goods; and on their role in consumption of nontradables, home-produced tradables, and imported goods. The dominant channel for CPI sensitivity is through the costs arising from imported input use in goods production. This channel is more important than changes in prices of imported goods directly consumed.

An important class of investment decisions is characterized by unrecoverable sunk costs, resolution of uncertainty through time, and the ability to invest in the future as an alternative to investing today. The options model provides guidance in such settings, including an investment decision rule called the "bad news principle": the downside investment state influences the investment decision whereas the upside investment state is ignored. This study takes a new approach to examining predictions of the options model by using the tools of experimental economics. Our evidence, which is drawn from student and professional trader subject pools, is broadly consonant with the options model.

What is the role of transport improvements in globalization? We argue that the nineteenth century is the ideal testing ground for this question: freight rates fell on average by 50% while global trade increased 400% from 1870 to 1913. We estimate the first indices of bilateral freight rates for the period and directly incorporate these into a standard gravity model. We also take the endogeneity of bilateral trade and freight rates seriously and propose an instrumental variables approach. The results are striking as we find no evidence that the maritime transport revolution was the primary driver of the late nineteenth century global trade boom. Rather, the most powerful forces driving the boom were those of income growth and convergence.

We determine how time delays affect trade, using newly collected data on the days it takes to move standard cargo from the factory gate to the ship in 98 countries. We estimate a difference gravity equation and find that each additional day that a product is delayed prior to being shipped reduces trade by more than 1%. Put differently, each day is equivalent to a country distancing itself from its trade partners by about 70 km on average. We also find that delays have a relatively greater impact on exports of time-sensitive goods, such as perishable agricultural products.

We test for customer discrimination with data from more than 800 retail stores employing over 70,000 individuals matched to census data on the demographics of each store's community. While our tests detect some increase in sales when the workforce more closely resembles potential customers, the effects we find are modest in magnitude. Customer discrimination is neither strong nor pervasive. We find little payoff to matching employee demographics to those of potential customers except when the customers do not speak English.