We present a new model of multi-product firms (MPFs) and flexible manufacturing and explore its implications in partial and general equilibrium. International trade integration affects the scale and scope of MPFs through a competition effect and a demand effect. We demonstrate how MPFs adjust in...

We address the question of whether the volume of manufacturing trade between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland is more or less than might be expected in the light of international experience. We estimate a gravity equation for bilateral manufacturing trade between 28 developed...

This paper analyses inequality in Ireland via a decomposition of the Gini coefficient by source of income. Using data from the Irish Household Budget Survey of 1987, seventeen components of disposable income are identified and their contribution to inequality evaluated. Their contribution to...

We introduce an index of trade policy restrictiveness defined as the uniform tariff which maintains the same trade volume as a given tariff/quota structure. Our index overcomes the problems of the trade-weighted average tariff - it avoids substitution bias, correctly accounts for general...

Almost twenty-five years after the appearance of Dixit and Stiglitz’s paper on monopolistic competition and optimum product diversity, I try to take stock of the progress which has been made in applying their approach to international trade theory. I review the principal applications to trade...

I briefly review the empirical evidence in the trade and wages debate, which overwhelmingly rejects the Heckscher-Ohlin explanation for recent increases in OECD skill premia. I then argue that the same evidence is also difficult to reconcile in general equilibrium with the view that exogenous...

The theory of strategic trade policy yields ambiguous recommendations for assistance to exporting firms in oligopolistic industries. However, some writers have suggested that investment subsidies are a more robust recommendation than export subsidies. We show that, though ambiguous in principle,...

I review and extend three approaches to trade and environmental policies - competitive general equilibrium, oligopoly and monopolistic competition. The first two have surprisingly similar implications - deviations from first-best rules are justified only by constraints on policy choice (which...