This paper examines the link between imported technologies and a country’s export performance, as measured by product quality. The analysis is set against the background of the process of regional integration between the EU and its neighbouring developing countries. The underlying question is...

Contrary to what has been standard in the international trade literature, we argue that firms' access to international markets should not be just reduced to exogenous factors such as trade costs. Instead, we defend that market access can also be endogenous, since firms can affect international...

In a spatial economy where oligopolist firms compete in R&D, it is found that geography affects the innovative behaviour of firms. Notably, international differences in market size conduce to endogenous asymmetries between firms given that firms located in the country with more demand have...

In an oligopoly trade model where firms engage in R&D, international differences in market size allow for the emergence of endogenous asymmetries between firms. Concretely, firms located in countries with more demand become more competitive because they have strong incentives to perform R&D...

Two central results in the strategic trade literature are that governments shall support winners and that there is a policy prisoner dilemma in international subsidy wars (i.e. countries have incentives to support local firms but they would be better off by cooperating to not intervene). We show...

In a repeated game setting of a vertically related industry, we study the collusive effects of vertical mergers. We show that any vertical merger facilitates upstream collusion, no matter how large (in terms of capacity or size of product portfolio) the integrated downstream buyer. But a...

The Spanish electricity spot market is highly concentrated both on the seller and the buyer side. Furthermore, unlike electricity spot markets in other deregulated electricity systems, large buyers and sellers are typically vertically integrated. This allows both large net sellers and large net...

We construct a model where the equilibrium organization of firms changes as an economy approaches the world technology frontier. In vertically integrated firms, owners (managers) have to spend time both on production and innovation activities, and this creates managerial overload, and...

This paper investigates the determinants of vertical integration. We first derive a number of predictions regarding the relationship between technology intensity and vertical integration from a simple incomplete contracts model. Then, we investigate these predictions using plant-level data for...

We examine integration strategies of multinational firms that face a rich array of choices of international organization. Each firm in an industry must provide headquarter services from its home country, but can produce its intermediate inputs and conduct assembly operations in one or more of...