This paper examines the relationship between resource development and industrialization. When transport costs are high, the region with a more valuable natural resource offers a higher welfare than the other region. However, when transport costs decrease, firms begin to move out of the region,...

The paper embeds child labor in a standard two-sector general-equilibrium model of a small open economy facing perfectly competitive markets, efficiency wages, and free-trade. The modern sector produces a homogeneous good using skilled adult labor and capital, and offers effort-based efficiency...

We consider a bilateral monopoly with a supplier and a buyer. Their trading terms are determined through negotiations, but affected by the buyer's efforts to search for outside suppliers. We find surprisingly that a market expansion may harm the supplier

This paper examines the role of outside options in a downstream duopoly with exclusive vertical relations as in the Japanese automobile industry. In our setup, the downstream firms have outside options, and two upstream firms with exclusive relations can engage in cost reducing investments. More...

This paper examines international trade in tainted food and other low-quality products. We first find that for a large class of environments, free trade is the trading system that conveys the highest incentives to produce non-tainted high-quality goods by foreign exporters. However, free trade...

This paper examines the role of dual sourcing (e.g., outside options) in vertical and horizontal relations. In a bilateral monopoly market, if either the upstream or downstream firm has outside options, the other firm could lose from seemingly positive shocks, e.g., market expansion or...

This paper models the interactions of a labor union and a monopoly firm under an import quota in a small open economy. The distorted equilibrium is depicted in a diagram, in which wages and employment in both sectors, and the monopoly rent can be identified. The imposition of an import quota in...

We construct a partial equilibrium model of intra-industry cross-hauling DFI with unionized duopoly, where wages and employment are determined through Nash bargaining between firms and national labor unions. We show that under symmetry, cross-hauling DFI is the unique Nash equilibrium, in which...

This paper presents a simple model of a partially decentralized multinational firm (MNF) in competition with a rival firm. It is shown that transfer pricing can be used as a rent-shifting device by the MNF to compete with the rival. This arises because the MNF headquarters uses the transfer...

Suppose that governments care about their tax revenue and local firms have some say in environmental regulations. Then, the level of employment and environmental compliance may be negotiated. We find that firms located in different countries can improve their threat-point payoffs by mutual...