This paper examines how skill-biased growth can generate economic fragmentation (income dis-parities) that give rise to social fragmentation (the adoption of increasingly incompatible social identities and values), which generate political fragmentation (the adoption of increasingly incompatible...

Import regulations are globally the most prevalent form of intervention in international trade. The regulations should, under rules of the WTO, protect consumers and the environment but can be used to protect producers. We investigate the ambiguity of intent. We set out a model that when applied...

We study infant industry protection using a dynamic model in which the industry’s cost is initially higher than that of foreign competitors. The industry can stochastically lower its cost via learning by doing. Whether the industry has transitioned to low cost is private information. We use a...

Can trade agreements motivate environmental conservation? I first present a model whereby the government in the South expands its production capacity (e.g., deforest) before trading with the North. After deriving negative relationships between tariff reductions and conservation, I show how all...

This paper examines the trade policy response of Latin American governments to the rapid growth of China and India in world markets. To explain higher protection in sectors where a large share is imported from these countries, we extend the protection for sale' model to allow for different...

Are retaliatiory tariffs politically targeted and, if so, are they effective? Do countries designing a retaliation response face a trade-off between maximizing political targeting and mitigating domestic economic harm? We use the recent trade escalation between the US, China, the European Union...

We examine how trade openness influences income inequality within countries. The sample includes 139 countries over the period 1970-2014. We employ predicted openness as instrument to deal with the endogeneity of trade openness. The effect of trade openness on income inequality differs across...