Specific tariffs are more commonly applied in agriculture than in the rest of the economy. We argue that the volatility of agricultural commodity markets is a contributing factor by showing that higher expected welfare can be achieved with the optimal specific tariff than with its ad valorem...

We study the impact of public quality standards on industry structure and trade when firms may be able to develop their own private standard with a higher quality than the public standard. To reach our goal, we introduce vertical differentiation in an international trade model based on...