This paper analyzes a potential strategy for escaping liquidity traps. The strategy is based on an augmented Taylor-type interest-rate feedback rule and differs from usual specifications in that when inflation falls below a threshold, the central bank temporarily deviates from the traditional...

A theoretical model is developed and applied to the North American auto industry, motivated by the possibility of US-Mexico free trade. Special features of the model include (1) significant scale economies at the plant level, (2) imperfect competition among firms, (3) joint ownership of plants...

A two-region, two-firm model is developed in which firms choose the number and the regional locations of their plants. Both firms pollute and, in this context, market structure is endogenous to environmental policy. There are increasing returns at the plant level, imperfect competition between...

The great contraction of 2008 pushed the U.S. economy into a protracted liquidity trap (i.e., a long period with zero nominal interest rates and inflationary expectations below target). In addition, the recovery was jobless (i.e., output growth recovered but unemployment lingered). This paper...

This paper studies the relationship between financial structure and the welfare consequences of fixed exchange rate regimes in small open emerging economies with downward nominal wage rigidity. The paper presents two surprising results. First, a pegging economy might be better off with a closed...

International trade policy analysis has tended to focus on the production side of general equilibrium, with policies such as a tariff or carbon tax affecting international and internal income distributions through a Heckscher-Ohlin nexus of factor intensities and factor endowments. Here I move...

We formulate a two-country model with monopolistic competition and heterogeneous firms to reconsider labor market linkages in open economies. Labor-market imperfections arise by virtue of country-specific real minimum wages. Two principal experiments are considered. First, we show that trade...

More than half of U.S. currency circulates abroad. As a result, much of the seignorage income of the United States is generated outside of its borders. In this paper we characterize the Ramsey-optimal rate of inflation in an economy with a foreign demand for its currency. In the absence of such...

The literature on multinationals and developing countries has examined the causalityquot; running from direct investment to changes in country characteristics (wages skills, etc.) and also the opposite direction of causality, from existing country characteristics toquot; inward direct...