This paper investigates empirically the role of Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) as determinants of migration inflows for 29 OECD countries in the period 1998-2008. By increasing information about signatory countries, PTAs are expected to drive migration flows towards member countries....

The theoretical claim that ethnic networks encourage trade has found broad empirical support in the literature on migration, business networks and international trade. Ethnic networks matter for the exporting firm, as they exhibit the potential to lower fixed and variable cost of exporting. This...

Recent empirical studies have been searching for evidence on and driving forces for offshoring. Frequently, this has been done by analyzing gross trade flows related to offshore activities using gravity equations augmented by ad hoc measures of supply-side country differences. This paper...

Advanced industrial countries have been exhibiting a steady decline of the labor income shares in the last two decades. We explain this phenomenon by resorting to the old Stolper-Samuelson theorem. The conclusions concerning the impact of free trade on the income distribution are unambiguous in...

This paper studies the impact of trade within US-headquartered multinational companies (MNCs) on labour demand for all employees, as well as, for those of high and low skill in US manufacturing for the period 1995 – 2005. We find strong evidence on the positive and negative effect of...

A number of theoretical studies have tended to trace the nature of globalization process’ impacts (mostly characterised by trade opening) on informality, while relevant empirical literature has been not well developed. The paper aims to fill this knowledge gap by shedding further light on the...

Trade liberalization is no Pareto-improvement - there are winners (high-skilled) and losers (low-skilled). To compensate the losers the government is assumed to introduce unemployment benefits (UB). These benefits are financed by either a wage tax, a payroll tax, or a profit tax. Using a...

We analyse a world consisting of ’the North’ and ’the South’ where labour standards in the North are set by trade unions. Standards set by unions tend to increase output and welfare. There are no unions in the South and work standards are suboptimal. Trade between these two countries can...

Foreign trade and foreign direct investments (FDI) are key elements for economic development and growth of both a country and its regions. This paper focuses on foreign trade and FDI in Austrian regions (Bundesländer). Unfortunately, data on regional trade in Austria is only available on a very...

This paper deals with firms’ decision related to international activities in a twocountry oligopoly model with a homogeneous product and unionized labor markets. Using a three-stage non-cooperative game with firms being first movers, it is found that firms’ strategies are affected by the...