This paper considers the likely impact that European Union (EU) will have on the labor compact. It is argued that, despite increased economic integration in Europe, countries will still be able to maintain distinct labor practices if they are willing to bear the cost of those practices. The...

Existing models of contagious currency crises are summarized and surveyed, and it is argued that more weight should be put on political factors. Towards this end, the concept of political contagion introduced, whereby contagion in speculative attacks across currencies arises solely because of...

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) has been growing rapidly, at a pace far exceeding the growth in international trade. Thus, a full understanding of the relationship between trade in goods and FDI is important for obtaining a complete picture of the extent and sources of international linkages. We...

Standard neoclassical growth models rarely admits international factor mobility: convergence may result from factor accumulation in a closed economy, or from technology transfer. Conventional models are thus poorly equipped to explain the contribution of international factor flows to convergence...

Economists and political scientists have frequently attempted to determine whether trade policy-related political action takes place along factor-lines (such as capital versus labor, as implied by the Stolper-Samuelson theorem) or along industry-lines (as implied by models with imperfect factor...

While technologies and policy fundamentals are presumably different internationally, inducing differences in growth rates, capital mobility is shown to be a powerful force in achieving complete growth rate equalization across countries. We provide evidence in support of this effect, showing that...

This paper uses data from U.S. states to investigate whether electoral accountability affects economic policy choices. We set up a model in which the possibility of being re-elected may curtail opportunistic behavior by incumbent governors. We find that facing a binding term limit affects...