We present a model in which the microstructure of trade in a commodity or asset is endogenously determined. Producers and consumers of a commodity (or buyers and sellers of an asset) who wish to trade can choose between two competing types of intermediaries: 'middlemen' (dealer/brokers) and...

How did we come to think that eliminating poverty is a legitimate goal for public policy? What types of policies have emerged in the hope of attaining that goal? The last 200 years have witnessed a dramatic change in thinking about poverty. Mainstream economic thinking in the 18th century held...

Trevor Swan independently developed the neoclassical growth model. Swan (1956) was published ten months later than Solow (1956), but included a more complete analysis of technical progress, which Solow treated separately in Solow (1957). Reference is sometimes made to the "Solow-Swan growth...

This paper, divided into seven sections, considers the development of economic growth theory in light of the spectacular advances of the economies of China, India, and Southeast Asia. Section 1 reviews the debate over the sources of technological change and the measurement of total factor...

We propose a theory of monetary policy and macroprudential interventions in financial markets. We focus on economies with nominal rigidities in goods and labor markets and subject to constraints on monetary policy, such as the zero lower bound or fixed exchange rates. We identify an aggregate...

This paper presents ex post decomposition analysis of wage inequality change using multi-sector general equilibrium models. The analytical structure used is a specific- factors model of trade, which we calibrate to UK data for the two years 1979 and 1975. We first calibrate our general...

The Heckscher-Ohlin-Vanek model of factor service trade is a central construct in international economics. Empirically, though, it is a flop. This warrants a new approach. Using Japanese regional data we are able to test the HOV model by independently examining its component production and...

In this article we define a Recursive Competitive Equilibrium, provide an example and review the related literature. The article is an entry prepared for The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, 2nd Edition (Palgrave Macmillan: New York).

This study demonstrates how constrained efficient allocations can arise endogenously as equilibria in an economy with a limited ability to enforce contracts and with private agents behaving competitively, taking a set of taxes as given. The taxes in this economy limit risk-sharing and arise in...

The increasing returns revolution in trade is incomplete in an important respect there exists no compelling empirical demonstration of the role of increasing returns in determining production and trade structure. One reason is that trade patterns of the canonical increasing returns models are a...