Economic development is accompanied by structural change. The trade theoretic literature offers two major hypotheses – i. e., the factor-endowment and the total-factor-productivity-- for explaining the stylized facts of structural change. This note revisits these hypotheses. In particular, it...

The rush for land acquisition—primarily driven by food shortage and run for agrofuel—has drawn considerable attention. Some documents published in late 2009, 2010, and 2011 report this phenomenon. Terminological differences aside, it is—quite distinct from materials or service...

At the heart of the Skill Biased Technical Change literature is a discussion of the temporal impact of technological change on wages. The narrative describes technological change as allowing for the increased codification of routine tasks which enables capital to become more easily substituted...

The contrasting effects of labour market rigidity on efficiency are investigated in a model where technological change is non-general purpose and different types of skills are available to workers. Ex ante efficiency calls for high labour market rigidity, as this favours workers’ acquisition...

This paper compares the evolution of wage inequality along three different skill groups (low-, middle- and high-skilled) across five industrialized countries (Finland, Germany, Italy, Korea and the US). Despite similar exposure to technological change, the countries exhibit significant...

This study investigates the impact of real exchange rate uncertainty on import demand of Thailand. The period of study is during July 1997 to December 2011. The results from bounds testing for cointegration show that all variables are cointegrated. Even though there is no short-run impact, but...

We build up a simple Ricardian trade model with imperfection in the market for credit which affects the pattern of production. Workers/entrepreneurs are endowed with different levels “capital” and need to borrow to produce the credit intensive good. We argue that in such a framework...

The importance of the economic borders of the nations is diminishing continuously, and this phenomenon is strongly linked to regionalization and globalization. We consider that the starting point of the idea that economic borders (represented by nations’ commercial policies) are irrelevant for...

The purpose of this paper is to extend the Fields’ (1989) multi sector job-search model in a three sector general equilibrium framework by introducing international trade and an input, capital. The three sectors are the rural sector, the urban informal sector and the urban formal sector. The...