We study the relationship between participation in free trade agreements (FTAs) and the sustainability of democracy. Our model shows that FTAs can critically reduce the incentive of authoritarian groups to seek power by destroying protectionist rents, thus making democracies last longer. This...

Using detailed data on trade and tariffs from 1992-2007, we examine how the ASEAN Free Trade Agreement has affected trade with non-members and external tariffs facing non-members. First, we examine the effect of preferential and external tariff reduction on import growth from ASEAN insiders and...

This paper reviews the theoretical and the empirical literature on regionalism. The formation of regional trade agreements has been, by far, the most popular form of reciprocal trade liberalization in the last fifteen years. The discriminatory character of these agreements has raised three main...

Firms need to incur substantial sunk costs to break in foreign markets, yet many give up exporting shortly after their first experience, which typically involves very small sales. Conversely, other new exporters shoot up their foreign sales and expand to new destinations. We investigate a simple...

We examine the effect of regionalism on unilateral trade liberalization using industry-level data on applied MFN tariffs and bilateral preferences for ten Latin American countries from 1990 to 2001. We find that preferential tariff reduction in a given sector leads to a reduction in the external...

We examine the qualitative and quantitative predictions of a heterogeneous firm model à la Melitz (2003) in the context of the Canada - US Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA) of 1989. We calibrate our model to the pre-trade liberalization stage, simulate the trade liberalization, and compute the...

This paper analyses the competitiveness of the manufacturing industry in the CEE candidate countries (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia) with special emphasis on trade with the European Union during the second half of the...

This report investigates the impact of trade structure and trade specialization on long-run development patterns in a heterogeneous set of countries, including most OECD countries, developing and rapidly industrializing Asian and Latin American countries as well as ten Central and Eastern...

This study looks at the relationship between trade integration and labour markets for a group of OECD economies (USA, Japan, France, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, United Kingdom). We examine particularly trade relationships between these OECD economies and different groups of 'Southern'...

This paper studies the impact of NAFTA on informality and real wages in Mexico. Using a dynamic industry model with firm heterogeneity, it is predicted that import tariff elimination could reduce the incidence of informality by making more profitable to some firms to enter the formal sector,...