Until recently, government procurement bidding processes have generally favored domestic firms by awarding the contract to a domestic firm even if a foreign firm tenders a lower bid, so long as the difference between the two is sufficiently small. This has been replaced by an agreement...

In this paper we examine optimal strategic trade p[olicy under oligopoly with many home and foreign firms when the firms have different levels of efficiency and where a trade-off exists between the subsidy bill and firms profits. The first-best policy involves a structure of firm specific export...

I consider the implications of recent research for R&D policy in developing countries. Typical new growth models, which assume free entry and no strategic behaviour by R&D producers, are less appropriate for policy guidance than strategic oligopoly models. But the latter have ambiguous...

We characterise optimal trade and industrial policy in dynamic oligopolistic markets. If governments can commit to future policies, optimal first-period intervention should diverge from the profit-shifting benchmark to an extent which exactly offsets the strategic behaviour implied by Fudenberg...

I argue that increased foreign competition can affect technical choice and skill differentials even when actual imports do not rise significantly. I present a model of General Oligopolistic Equilibrium ("GOLE") in which a reduction in import barriers (whether technological or policy-imposed)...

I outline the effect of business networks on trade, FDI and wel- fare in a two-country, two-firm duopoly. The network effect, following Greaney (2002), is modelled as a marginal cost disadvantage facing a firm from Foreign in selling to Home. Unlike traditional trade costs, this cost cannot be...

This paper studies the strategic behavior of multinationals towards weak labor standards in developing countries (South). Without a marginal cost pricing policy, abundant labor in the South gives firms the power to set wages through their choice of output. A strategic reduction in output offsets...

This paper analyses levels of low literacy across twelve countries using the International Adult Literacy Survey. We go beyond existing work that only looks at the proportions below certain critical levels of literacy. Using methods developed for the measurement of poverty we calculate measures...

This paper endogenises the extent of intra-sectoral competition in a multi-sectoral model of oligopoly in general equilibrium. Firms choose capacity followed by prices. If the benefits of capacity investment in a given sector are below a threshold level, the sector exhibits Bertrand behaviour,...

In this paper, trade policy formation is incorporated into an economic geography model. The political setup used is a modi- fied version of that introduced by Grossman and Helpman (1994) in which policy makers may be influenced by lobbying contributions. On the basis of the underlying trade...