This paper sets up a two country monopolistic competition model with intra-industry trade to study the effects of an exogenous differential in wage and social policies on the location of industry. Two model scenarios are considered. In the traditional one with physical capital, such a...

Recent literature on the workhorse model of intra-industry trade has explored heterogeneous cost structures at the firm level. These approaches have proven to add realism and predictive power. This note shows, however, that this added realism also implies that there may exist a positive...

This paper presents a simple Chamberlinian agglomeration model which, like the canonical core-periphery (CP) model, contains two agglomerative forces. However, in contrast to that model, the present model is analytically solvable. Moreover, the present model exhibits a 'supercritical pitchfork...

This paper investigates the effect of economic integration on the ability of firms to maintain a collusive understanding about staying out of each other's markets. The paper distinguishes among different types of trade costs: ad valorem, unit, fixed. It is shown that for a sufficient reduction...

The paper explores theoretically and empirically why trade intermediaries (TIs) are frequently used as agents for exports to some countries but not to others. We adapt a standard intra-industry trade model with variable export costs (e.g. transport) and fixed export costs (e.g. market access) to...

This paper investigates the effect of economic integration on the ability of firms to maintain a collusive understanding about staying out of each other's markets. The paper distinguishes among different types of trade costs: ad valorem, unit, fixed. It is shown that for a sufficient reduction...

The German potable water supply industry is regarded as being highly fragmented, thus inhibiting high potentials for efficiency improvements through consolidation. Focusing on a hypothetical restructuring of the industry, we apply Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to analyze the potential...

We analyze below-cost pricing in retail markets and examine its impact on social welfare as well as on suppliers' incentives to invest in quality. Considering negotiations about a linear wholesale price between the retailer and her suppliers, we find that below-cost pricing aggravates the double...

This paper investigates the strategic value of the managerial incentive scheme in affecting firms' incentive in R&D investment and their product market activities. Firstly, we find that in Cournot-quantity competition, owners strategically assign a non-profitmaximization objective to their...

Using firm-level panel data from the German cost structure survey over the period 1992 to 2000, our empirical analysis shows that firms that increased material inputs relative to internal labor costs performed better in terms of gross operating surplus than other firms. However, firms that...