In More or Less, Stephen Redding shares his unique vision of life in its totality and how our participation in it colors the pathway for ourselves, the world, and the universe. Mr. Redding draws on a myriad of amazing life experiences to illustrate his global view, and he offers his readers hope for radiant and fulfilling tomorrows by offering solutions for stagnancy and positive suggestions for enhancing personal growth. By drawing out and exposing forces that negatively impact our existence, Mr. Redding equips the reader to move through life less encumbered and avoid pitfalls that threaten life's splendor. His lucid exploration of our individual roles in the existence experience makes it abundantly clear that we do, indeed, have the ability to determine whether our lives are More or Less. In an age of ceaseless bombardment by messages of greed, fear, suffering, and violence, More or Less is a positive and hopeful communiqué that allows its readers to take charge of their own destinies and bring to bear lasting effects on our world and the worlds beyond our own. No matter what stage of life the reader is in, Stephen Redding's message reaches out with compassion and kindness to offer inspiration, gentle guidance, and expectant anticipation for what lies ahead.

In the pages of Something More author Stephen Redding weaves events of the past, truths of the present, and promises for the future into a seamless tapestry of lessons learned, comfort, compassion, and hope. Through a series of his life's events, punctuated by a cast of friends, family members, and uniquely original characters, Mr. Redding escorts the reader on a pathway of discovery that leads to the poignant recognition that this earthly life, this reality, is a mere morsel in the fabric of the existence experience. His nontraditional life combined with his unconventional style makes the message conveyed in Something More palatable, uplifting, and engaging. At a time in history when there are unparalleled numbers of negative messages assaulting the human mind and heart, Something More radiates unmistakable optimism, faith, and promise. In Something More Stephen Redding's unique perspectives cloak the reader in illuminated warmth, not unlike the comforting embrace of a giving sun after a long and difficult night. His message is for all people, in all stages of life, who yearn to find deeper meaning in their lives and greater hope for their tomorrows.

This paper presents a model of international trade that features heterogeneous firms, relative endowment differences across countries, and consumer taste for variety. The paper demonstrates that firm reactions to trade liberalization generate endogenous Ricardian productivity responses at the industry level that magnify countries' comparative advantage. Focusing on the wide range of firm-level reactions to falling trade costs, the model also shows that, as trade costs fall, firms in comparative advantage industries are more likely to export, that relative firm size and the relative number of firms increases more in comparative advantage industries and that job turnover is higher in comparative advantage industries than in comparative disadvantage industries.

This paper develops a general equilibrium model of multi-product firms and analyzes their behavior during trade liberalization. Firm productivity in a given product is modeled as a combination of firm-level "ability" and firm-product-level "expertise", both of which are stochastic and unknown prior to the firm's payment of a sunk cost of entry. Higher firm-level ability raises a firm's productivity across all products, which induces a positive correlation between a firm's intensive (output per product) and extensive (number of products) margins. Trade liberalization fosters productivity growth within and across firms and in aggregate by inducing firms to shed marginally productive products and forcing the lowest-productivity firms to exit. Though exporters produce a smaller range of products after liberalization, they increase the share of products sold abroad as well as exports per product. All of these adjustments are shown to be relatively more pronounced in countries' comparative advantage industries.

This paper models the relationship between countries' distance from global economic activity, endogenous investments in education, and economic development. Firms in remote locations pay greater trade costs on both exports and intermediate imports, reducing the amount of value added left to remunerate domestic factors of production. If skill-intensive sectors have higher trade costs, more pervasive input-output linkages, or stronger increasing returns to scale, we show theoretically that remoteness depresses the skill premium and therefore incentives for human capital accumulation. Empirically, we exploit structural relationships from the model to demonstrate that countries with lower market access have lower levels of educational attainment. We also show that the world's most peripheral countries are becoming increasingly remote over time.