Free trade or preferential trade areas (PTAs) allow importers who belong to the area to export to each other while paying zero or preferential tariffs as long as Rules of Origin (ROOs) are met. Meeting them is costly not only in terms of production costs but also in terms of documentation costs....

College admissions in many countries are based on a centrally administered test. Applicants invest a great deal of resources to improve their performance on the test, and there is growing concern about the large costs associated with these activities. We consider modifying such tests by...

This paper develops a new model with heterogeneous firms under perfect competition in a Heckscher-Ohlin-Samuelson setting. We show that trade need not make selection in the comparative advantage sector stricter as suggested by earlier work. Selection is driven by the capital intensity in entry...

We investigate the phenomenon of trade re-allocations across countries as a result of the U.S.- China trade war. Using quarterly data on U.S. imports, we find evidence, as do others, of trade diversion in a range of industries and products, including products not targeted by U.S. tariffs on...

Using data from the Turkish University Entrance Exam, we investigate the extent of the gender gap in college placement, its underlying causes, and potential policy interventions. We estimate preferences using a novel approach which improves our ability to capture substitution patterns and find...

This paper analyzes the role of network externalities and expectations about them in the formulation of trade policy. Their effects are studied in duopoly situations when products are compatible and when they are incompatible and when multimarket effects are possible. Network externalities and...

This paper deals with the effect of trade restrictions on competition in oligopolistic markets. Quantitative restrictions, such as VER's (Voluntary Export Restrictions) are shown to affect the extent to which foreign firms can compete in the domestic market, and hence to raise the equilibrium...

Thereare three points made in this paper. The first is that the question concerning choice of a product line by a monopolist is similar in structure to other adverse selection problems -- and can be analyzed in an elementary way by adapting techniques recently developed for such problems. Such...

This paper analyzes some aspects of the effects of trade restrictions (such as tariffs, quotas and quality controls) and their desirability when the quantity of the imported good is endogenous, and the foreign producer is a monopolist. It uses a fairly general model based on the work of Spence...

The computable general equilibrium models used in the literature tend to be a bit of a black box. This paper provides some intuition behind what goes on in these black boxes by laying out a simple general equilibrium model and intuitively explaining what lies behind the demand for emissions. It...