This paper questions whether the overseas expansion of a country’s retailers fosters overall bilateral exports towards these host markets. To address this question, we consider an empirical trade model, where the foreign sales of multinational retailers reduce the fixed and variable trade...

One of the most striking features of the crisis that started during the fall of 2008 has been the sharp decrease in the world volume of trade in goods. The collapse of trade values has been even larger, leading to a decrease of import price indices. We argue that the decrease of import price...

Protectionist instruments such as tariffs can distort the prices of traded goods. This paper explores the impact of specific (per-unit) duties on patterns of agricultural trade. Specific duties may encourage countries to export higher priced products, leading to an “Alchian-Allen effect” on...

We revisit competitiveness issues using recent data and show that the global financial crisis has taken a toll on European producers that before 2007 were maintaining their market positions. The EU competitiveness in goods has recently deteriorated, even in the upper and high-tech segments of...