The recent availability of trade data at a firm-product-country level calls for a new generation of models able to exploit the large variability detected across observations. By developing a model of monopolistic competition in which varieties enter preferences non-symmetrically, we show how...

This paper overviews the main interactions between product market competition and long run growth.We focus on the first generation of R&D-based growth models and keep distinguished the vertical from the horizontal differentiation approaches. Our main objective is to study why these two branches...

In this paper we test the firm-specific determinants of delocation to low-wage countries on the part of Italian firms. We collect data through a survey on 167 firms the in mechanics and textile industries. Our data show that in recent years there has been an upsurge in FDI activity by Italian...

Existing studies show that intermediaries can help verify or screen product quality for buyers. This paper examines this claim both theoretically and empirically in the context of international trade. We develop a heterogeneous firm model that features vertical and horizontal differentiation of...

In this paper we focus on the relation between product quality and information, which let us distinguishing search and experience goods. We show how literature has studied the way firms signalling the high quality of their products/services: introductory discount pricing, strong advertising...

This paper identifies the most restrictive limit that rules of origin can enforce and still continue to guarantee gains from trade area formation in general settings. Many commonly used rules of origin exceed this condition in practise. Second, free trade areas generally involve unharmonized...

Is privatization per se socially beneficial? Or do those benefits depend on the subsequent changes in the regulatory regime? In this paper, building on Vogelsang, Jones and Tandon (1994), we answer these questions by analyzing three different counterfactuals about British Telecom privatization...

Assume that government maximizes the well being of its citizens subject to technological, political, and informational constraints. How should equilibrium be perturbed so that equilibrium post-perturbation quantities satisfy new exogenously-specified bounds? We prove an intervention principle...