We use a multi-country asymmetric oligopolistic framework for segmented markets to study the welfare effects of reducing tariff discriminations - which we call a move towards Most Favored Nation tariffs. Both unilateral and multilateral reforms are considered. We investigate this issue under...

This paper will assess the importance of internal firm resources in overcoming sunk entry costs associated with export. When firms are not able to raise additional external funds for investments, they are credit-constrained, and in such a case, new exporters have to rely on their internal...

This paper examines the trade policy response of Latin American governments to the rapid growth of China and India in world markets. To explain higher protection in sectors where a large share is imported from these countries, we extend the `protection for sale\' model to allow for di®erent...

The number of preferential trade agreements has greatly increased over the past two decades, yet most existing bilateral arrangements take the form of free trade areas, and less than ten percent can be considered to be fully fledged customs unions. This paper develops a political economy model...

This paper analyses the relationship between firm productivity and export behavior in German manufacturing firms. We examine whether productivity increases the probability of exporting, and assert that there is a causal relationship from high productivity to entering foreign markets, as...

This paper studies how cross-country differences in labor market institutions shape the pattern of international trade, focusing on workers’ skill acquisition. I develop a model in which workers un-dertake non-contractible activities to acquire firm-specific skills on the job. In the model,...

Does policymakers\' horizon affect their willingness to support economic reforms? Voting in the U.S. Congress provides an ideal setting to address this question. Differences between the House and Senate, in which members serve two-year and six-year mandates respectively, allow to examine the...

Multi-sector versions of the international trade model of Eaton and Kortum (2002) usually re- strict trade elasticities to be identical across sectors, with potentially distorting effects on the estimates of the model parameters. This paper allows for heterogeneous sectoral trade elasticities...

Recent empirical studies have reported strong firm-level evidence of `learning by exporting\' in product innovation. In this paper we consider a specific channel which might contribute to explain the innovation premium of exporters, by focussing on the information exchange between firms...

n this paper we investigate the causal effect of immigration on trade flows. We exploit the very favorable set-up offered by the Italian panel data — the fine geographical disaggregation (provinces, i.e., Nomenclature of territorial units for statistics 3 level — NUTS-3), the very high...