Standards and technical regulations which govern the admissibility of imported goods into an economy raise costs of exporters entering new markets, and may have a particularly high impact on firms seeking to export from developing countries. Yet standards may also have a positive side, such as...

Standards and technical regulations which govern the admissibility of imported goods into an economy raise costs of exporters entering new markets, and may have a particularly high impact on firms seeking to export from developing countries. Yet standards may also have a positive side, such as...

Since at least the 1960s, the European Union (EU) has offered various kinds of non-reciprocal trade preferences for developing countries. Originally, these trade preferences had at least two policy goals: (i) to increase export volumes for developing countries and thereby boost their export...

The paper examines the constraint import competition imposes on the price-cost margins in Swedish manufacturing industries. It addresses two questions. Has the free trade agreement between the EC and EFTA reinforced the disciplinary effect of imports? Are there differences between imports of...

No abstract.

The multinational firm (MNF) is introduced as the intersection between trade theory and the theory of the firm. I show that economies of scale associated with various knowledge inputs have made it possible for firms to grow large through internationalization and, once large, staying competitive...

This paper analyses the effect on agglomeration tendencies of allowing firms to become multi-region firms in a standard model of trade and location. More specifically, we introduce horizontal and vertical multi-region firms into the core-periphery (CP) model developed by Krugman (1991). The...

Recent theoretical analysis suggests that a reduction in the cost of exporting increases the degree of assortative matching between workers and firms in export-oriented industries. Changes that reduce the cost of imports have an ambiguous impact on matching. We combine detailed Swedish matched...

The theory of the firm suggests that firms can respond to poor contract enforcement by vertically integrating their production process. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether firms' integration opportunities affect the way institutions determine international trade patterns. We find...