This Paper investigates the welfare effects of trade liberalization by exploiting a natural policy experiment in the small open economy of Cyprus. A 1993 law relaxed import restrictions on used vehicles and facilitated the flow of used Japanese vehicles into the country. This led to a dramatic...

We propose that analysis of purchasing power parity (PPP) and the law of one price (LOOP) should explicitly take into account the possibility of ‘commodity points’ – thresholds delineating a region of no central tendency among relative prices, possibly due to lack of perfect arbitrage in...

While transport costs have fallen, the empirical evidence also points at rising total trade costs. In a model of industry location with endogenous transaction costs, we show how and under which conditions a decline in transport costs can lead to an increase in the total cost of trade.

This study examines the impact of Poland’s trade liberalization 1994-2001 on the industry wage structure. The liberalization was undertaken in preparation for Poland’s accession to the European Union and was more pronounced in industries with larger shares of unskilled labour. Our analysis...

In models with heterogeneous firms trade integration has a positive impact on aggregate productivity through the selection of the best firms as import competition drives the least productive ones out of the market. To quantify the impact of firm selection on productivity, we calibrate and...

The paper examines the welfare gains from North-South trade and their distribution. We construct an endogenous growth North-South model with four Southern stages of development as possible equilibria: specialisation in a traditional good; the South in addition copies Northern high-tech...