Regional liberalization sweeps the globe like wildfire while multilateral nude talks proceed at a glacial pace. Why are countries eager to liberalize regionally but reluctant to do so multilaterally? The answer of the GATT-is-dead school is that multilateralism is too cumbersome for contemporary...

This paper seeks to contribute to discussion of the reasonableness of sometimes seemingly innocent assumptions used in theoretical trade models that the direction of trade is both predetermined for each good for each country and fixed. Here, we provide computational evidence as to the...

Government budget balance forces the endogenous use of distortionary tax instruments" when an exogenous reform is implemented. The aggregate efficiency of such reforms is based" on comparisons of simple summary measures of the Marginal Cost of Funds of the various tariff" or quota changes with...

In this paper I analyze the productivity gains from trade liberalization in the Belgian textile industry. So far, empirical research has established a strong relationship between opening up to trade and productivity, relying almost entirely on deflated sales to proxy for output in the production...

This paper considers a specific factor model with two sectors in which agents are altruistic towards domestic residents. I show that, even if the degree of altruism is small, direct democracy leads to commercial policies that are biased against trade as long as the mobile factor is unbiased in...

This chapter assesses China's integration into the global trading system by examining areas of international political-economic "friction" associated with its increased trade. We use a number of newly constructed data sets to examine tensions associated with its rapidly increasing trade and the...

Mutual causation of predation and trade induces novel effects of commercial policy in this paper. The model can explain trade volume responses to market widening initiatives that are otherwise puzzlingly 'too big' or 'too small'. Efficient commercial policy (broadly defined) depends crucially on...

Recent theoretical work predicts that an important margin of adjustment to deregulation or trade reforms is the reallocation of output within firms through changes in their product mix. Empirical work has accordingly shifted its focus towards multi-product firms and their product mix decisions....

We consider a 3 country world in which each country's import market is served by competing exporters from its 2 trading partners. We assume that weak multilateral enforcement mechanisms prevent governments from implementing efficient trade policies through a multilateral agreement requiring...

This paper develops a general equilibrium model of multi-product firms and analyzes their behavior during trade liberalization. Firm productivity in a given product is modeled as a combination of firm-level "ability" and firm-product-level "expertise", both of which are stochastic and unknown...