We develop a model to study the behavior of firms in a Free Trade Area with Rules of Origin and the consequences of this behavior on the market equilibrium and outcome. We show that firms will choose to specialize, and that an FTA with strict ROOs on the intermediate good raises imports and...

The market access and welfare effects of Free Trade Areas (FTAs) without Rules of Origin (ROOs) are studied. We consider both the final and intermediate goods markets and their interlinkage. The FTA weakly reduces all tariffs and prices within the FTA. This raises quantity demanded and reduces...

This paper focuses on the effects of rules of origin in Free Trade Areas. We first point out that even rules of origin which are not restrictive, namely those which do not raise costs of production, have very pronounced effects on trade and investment flows. We then look at some different ways...

Regional trade agreements must specify domestic-content rules (rules of origin) that define the conditions under which a good qualifies as 'domestic' and so may be freely traded within the block. The paper analyzes such rules, focussing in particular on oligopolistic industries in which foreign...

In this paper it is argued that there is an important protectionist bias inherent in free trade agreements which is not present in custom unions. In any customs union or free trade agreement, one of the critical issues concerns "rules of origin." In a free trade agreement rules of origin have an...

Rising concern over the impact of Chinese industrial policy has led to severe trade tensions between China and some of its major trading partners. In recent years, foreign criticism has increasingly focused on the so-called "Made in China 2025" initiative. In this paper, we use information...

This paper develops a model of evolving standards for academic publishing. It is motivated by the increasing tendency of academic journals to require multiple revisions of articles and by changes in the content of articles. Papers are modeled as varying along two quality dimensions: q and r. The...

Over the last three decades there has been a dramatic increase in the length of time necessary to publish a paper in a top economics journal. This paper documents the slowdown and notes that a substantial part is due to an increasing tendency of journals to require that papers be extensively...

As patent data become more available in machine-readable form, an increasing number of researchers have begun to use measures based on patents and their citations as indicators of technological output and information flow. This paper explores the economic meaning of these citation-based patent...