Quarantine policy reviews are becoming more sophisticated following the Uruguay Round’s Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Measures and, in Australia’s case, following also the 1996 Nairn Report. Yet they still focus primarily on the effects of restrictions just on...

How does trade liberalization affect wages? This is the first paper to consider in theory and data how the impact of final and intermediate input tariff cuts on workers’ wages varies with the global engagement of their firm. Our model predicts that a fall in output tariffs lowers wages at...

Competition between opposing lobbies is an important factor in the endogenous determination of trade policy. This paper investigates empirically the consequences of lobbying competition between upstream and downstream producers for trade policy. The theoretical structure underlying the empirical...

This paper estimates the effects of trade liberalization on plant productivity. In contrast to previous studies, we distinguish between productivity gains arising from lower tariffs on final goods relative to those on intermediate inputs. Lower output tariffs can produce productivity gains by...

This paper simulates the costs of the US-Japan auto VER. Under a standard constant returns to scale (CRTS) formulation, the costs are estimated at about $10 billion. It then sequentially introduces important features of the auto VER: endogenous rent premium determination, wage distortions in...

This paper reviews estimates of the effects of `1992' on international trade and welfare, and the policy implications of those estimates. It surveys earlier research starting with the Cecchini Report of 1988 and then summarizes some new results based on general equilibrium modelling with...

In this paper, we analyze the effect of reducing import tariffs on intermediate inputs and final goods on the wage skill premium within firms in Indonesia – a country with a high share of unskilled workers. We present a new finding that reducing input tariffs reduces the wage skill premium...

Large multi-product firms dominate international trade flows. This paper documents new facts about multi-product manufacturing exporters that are not easily reconciled with existing multi-product models. Using novel linked production and export data at the firm-product level, we find that the...

This paper argues that the contribution of trade preferences to economic development needs to be reappraised in light of the growth of globalized trade in manufactures. Trade preferences may be able to act as a catalyst for manufacturing exports, leading to rapid growth in exports and...

A firm's productivity depends on how production is organized given the level of demand for its product. To capture this mechanism, we develop a theory of an economy where firms with heterogeneous demands use labor and knowledge to produce. Entrepreneurs decide the number of layers of management...