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We investigate declining output volatility in the G7 since 1970 in a panel context, seeking to explain the causes of the decline. We show that there is a significant role for both net financial wealth and trade openness as well as inflation volatility, even though previous studies have ignored the fact that it may be endogenous and its role therefore spurious. However, its importance clearly varies over time and across countries, and it appears less important as an explanation of declining volatility in the US than it does in the UK. Changes in openness appear to be at least as important in explaining the decline in US output volatility.

We investigate the relationship between exchange rate volatility, exchange rate risk diversification and the location of foreign direct investment in the manufacturing industries of Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand. We found a strong role for the yen|dollar exchange rate in location decisions of the US and Japanese investors. There is evidence in the literature that Japanese firms invest in Asia to circumvent the appreciation of the yen. Our results show that the volatility of the yen and the correlation between local exchange rates and the yen are significant determinants of the US and Japanese investments in the region. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This paper investigates the roles of comparative advantage and market size in the international location of manufacturing production. Building on the conventional Helpman and Krugman (1985) general equilibrium framework, our analysis extends the present literature by incorporating both effects in the same model, while allowing trade costs to vary almost continuously from autarky to free trade. The main result of our exercise is that market size effects offset comparative advantage if countries have similar factor proportions. A large country with a slight comparative disadvantage in manufacturing production may thus be a net exporter of manufactures. A small country with the same comparative disadvantage would be a net importer of manufactures. When countries are very dissimilar in their relative factor endowments, land-abundant countries specialize in the production of food, irrespective of market size, if manufactures are a labour-intensive sector. Labour-rich countries of any size are manufacture cores. However, land-abundant countries with large markets can sustain a domestic manufacturing industry until trade costs are very low, and in some cases only specialize in agriculture at free trade.Trade Liberalization, Market Size, Factor Proportions, Location Of Industries, Comparative Advantage, Market Access,

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