This paper examines how trade liberalization affects the innovation incentives of firms, and what this implies for industry productivity and social welfare. For this purpose we develop a reciprocal dumping model of international trade with heterogeneous firms and endogenous R&D. We identify two...

The paper extends the methodological toolbox of measures of industrial concentration and regional specialization. First, a taxonomy is proposed which gives rise to a modular construction system for disproportionality measures based on three characteristic features: the projection function, the...

This paper discusses the gains from foreign direct investment (FDI) in a two country setting with endogenous markets structures under two alternative locations for the oligopolistic industry. If the oligopolistic industry is located in the domestic country only, we show that market concentration...

This paper establishes eight stylized facts on the evolution of the localization of economic activity across industries and regions in the EU-15 since 1980. Localization, which nests concentration and specialization, is measured by a Theil index. The stylized facts reveal a broad aggregate trend...

Recent studies offer an ambiguous picture on the effectiveness of foreign aid in strengthening the export capacity of recipient countries. Moreover, the literature on aid for trade (AfT) has often neglected that exporters in the donor countries may be among the main beneficiaries. We hypothesize...

We construct comprehensive and comparable indices on the most relevant components of economic infrastructure. An unobserved components model is employed to cover the largest possible number of developing and developed countries over the period 1990-2010. We map major findings from the new...

Our empirical estimations indicate that aid-for-trade granted by OECD donors strengthens the trade relations of recipient countries with other developing countries. By focusing on South-South trade we mitigate endogeneity concerns that have plagued analyses of trade between recipients and donors...

Considering that primary commodity dependence continues to be a major problem of various lower income countries, we analyze whether Aid for Trade (AfT) has helped recipient countries upgrade and diversify their exports. Estimating an asymmetric and aggregated gravity model, we find that AfT has...