Supply chain disruptions, which have become commonplace, are often associated with globalization and trade. Little is known about optimal policy in the face of insecure supply chains. Should governments promote resilience by subsidizing backup sources of input supply? Should they encourage firms...

Free trade is not optimal for a small country that faces uncertain terms of trade if some factors are immobile - ex post, and markets for contingent claims are incomplete. The government can improve social welfare by using commercial policy that serves as a partial substitute for missing...

We characterize trade policies that result from political competition when assessments of well-being include both material and psychosocial components. The material component reflects, as usual, satisfaction from consumption. Borrowing from social identity theory, we take the psychosocial...

We develop a novel model of campaigns, elections, and policymaking in which the ex ante objectives of national party leaders differ from the ex post objectives of elected legislators. This generates a distinction between "policy rhetoric" and "policy reality" and introduces an important role for...

Whether governments clash in trade disputes or negotiate over trade agreements, their actions in the international arena reflect political conditions back home. Previous studies of cooperative and noncooperative trade relations have focused on governments that are immune from political pressures...

We develop a model in which special interest groups make political contributions in order to influence an incumbent government's choice of trade policy. In the political equilibrium. the interest groups bid for protection, and each group's offer is optimal given the offers of the others. The...

Using data assembled by the Global Environmental Monitoring System we examine the reduced-form relationship between various environmental indicators and the level of a country's per capita income. Our study covers four types of indicators: concentrations of urban air pollution; measures of the...