A lively debate is taking place over the impact of free trade agreements (FTAs) on East Asia's business between those who view the agreements as a harmful Asian "noodle bowl"—i.e., overlapping regional trade agreements—of trade deals and others who see net beneficial effects in...

Bilateral and regional cooperation initiatives in Asia have been growing in importance over the last five years. These accords span the real and financial sectors; rather than following the more typical pattern of “trade first, money later”, recent policy initiatives involve the simultaneous...

In this note, we examine how trade liberalization affects the profits of firms in the presence of network effects. We will show that, contrary to conclusions in the previous literature, trade liberalization between identical countries increases firms' profits despite intesified competition.

This paper considers a two-period model of market entry with horizontally differentiated products and switching costs. Conditions that are conducive to a competitive environment in the second period are shown to yield a less competitive outcome in the first period. That is, when the marginal...

This note explores the determinants of trade patterns by extending a Chamberlinian-Ricardian monopolistic competition trade model to have a larger number of industries as did Dornbush, Fischer and Samuelson (1977). It will be shown that the degree of cross-country technical differences among...

This paper proposes a three-country model of business services trade that captures the role of time zones in the division of labor. The connectivity of business service sectors via communications networks (e.g., the Internet) is found to determine the structure of comparative advantage. That is,...

The purpose of this study is to illustrate, with a simple three-region (located on a line), two-good (homogeneous good/differentiated high-tech products), two-factor (labor/"footloose" capital) model, how falling transport costs can affect firms' location decisions and trade structure. It is...

In this note, we examine how trade liberalization affects the profits of firms in the presence of network effects. We will show that, contrary to conclusions in the previous literature, trade liberalization between identical countries increases firms' profits despite intesified competition.

Applying Atkeson and Kehoe's (2000) dynamic model to the dynamic Chamberlin-Heckscher-Ohlin approach, we examine the role of the timing of development (e.g., the removal of trade barriers) as a determinant of trade patterns.

This note explores the determinants of trade patterns by extending a Chamberlinian-Ricardian monopolistic competition trade model to have a larger number of industries as did Dornbush, Fischer and Samuelson (1977). It will be shown that the degree of cross-country technical differences among...