This paper discusses the specificities of the labor market for older workers. It discusses the implications of those specificities for the effect of labor market institutions on the employability of those workers. It shows that while unemployment benefits indexed backwards and hiring costs are...

A model of the labour market under firing restrictions and endogenous quits is constructed. It is shown that in the spirit of Blanchard and Summers (1988), the model can generate multiple equilibria, with a low-quits/high-unemployment equilibrium coexisting with a high-quits/low-unemployment...

This paper formulates a discrete-time model to study the effects of firing costs on labour demand by a firm facing linear adjustment costs under serially independent productivity shocks. We show that a rise in firing costs reduces the firm's marginal propensities to hire and fire, and may...

This paper fits a gravity model to the trade of 76 market economies. It then applies the model to data on East European economies to estimate what their trading potential might have been, had behaved like market economies in the mid-1980s. At existing levels of national income, the...

This Paper develops a model for analysing the costs and benefits of intellectual property enforcement in LDCs. The North is more productive than the South and is the only source of innovator. There are two types of goods, and each bloc has a comparative advantage in producing a specific type of...

The theoretical literature follows two different approaches to explain the endogenous formation of a Customs Union (CU). The first one explains CU formation through the willingness of integrating partners to exploit terms-of-trade effects. Indeed, as the union forms, the 'domestic market' gets...

The welfare effects of PTAs are most directly linked to changes in trade prices, i.e., the terms of trade. This paper employs a simple strategic pricing game in segmented markets to measure the effects of MERCOSUR on the pricing of 'non-member' exports to the region. Working with detailed data...

This paper appraises the arguments that the creation of the EC has increased world protectionism <MI>relative to what it would otherwise have been<D>. Models of tariff bargaining between trade blocs suggest some increase, because the optimum tariff is higher for larger blocs, but this is not...</d></mi>

This paper constructs a simulation model of the EC footwear market with which to consider the effects of EC trade policies. It examines the Southern enlargement of the EC, the quotas imposed on Korean and Taiwanese sales - initially in France and Italy and subsequently, in line with the `1992'...

While barriers to trade in most goods and some services including capital flows have been reduced considerably over the past two decades, many remain. Such policies harm most the economies imposing them, but the worst of the merchandise barriers (in agriculture and textiles) are particularly...