Market size and transport costs are important ingredients of international trade. We propose to look at these issues from a different perspective. Using a Hotelling duopoly model with quadratic transport costs, we analyze the welfare effects of international trade between two countries which...

Market size and transport costs are important ingredients of international trade. We propose a look at these issues from a different perpspective. Using a Hotelling duopoly model with quadratic transport costs, we analyze the welfare effects of international trade between two countries which...

In this paper, we provide an explanation of why privatization may attract foreign investors interested in entering a regional market. Privatization turns the formerly-public firm into a less aggressive competitor since profit- maximizing output is lower than the welfare-maximizing one. The...

We investigate how differences in set-up costs of various types affect the trade-off between global effciency and spatial equity and show that the standard assumption of symmetry in fixed costs masks the existence of an interesting effect: the range of available varieties varies depends on the...

The purpose on this paper is twofold. First, we present an alternative model of agglomeration and trade that displays the main features of the recent economic geography literature while allowing for the derivation of analytical results by means of simple algebra. Second, we show how this...

We consider an economic geography model of a new genre: all firms and workers are mobile and their agglomeration within a city generates rising urban costs through competition on a land market. When commuting costs are low (high), the industry tends to be agglomerated (dispersed). With two...

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, we present an alternative model of agglomeration and trade that displays the main features of the recent economic geography literature while allowing for the derivation of analytical results by means of simple algebra. Second, we show how this...

This paper focuses on two distint facets of globalization: the decrease in the trade costs of goods and the decline of communication costs between headquarters and production facilities within firms. When the unskilled have about the same wage in the two regions, the decrease of these costs...

We investigate how international trade and trade policy possibly affect the regional distribution of economic activities within a country involved in a process of economic integration. Our analysis reveals that the impact of decreasing international trade costs on the spatial distribution of...

We study the effects of a decrease in trade costs on the spatial distribution of industry in a multi-regional economy, when a rise in the regional population of workers generates higher urban costs. We show that high and low trade costs imply that all regions involve a positive share of the...