We study the welfare impact of rules of origin in free trade agreements where final-good producers source customized inputs from suppliers within the trading bloc. We employ a property-rights framework that features hold-up problems in suppliers’ decisions to invest, and where underinvestment...

This paper provides a quantitative analysis of the new EU-Japan free trade agreement (FTA), the biggest bilateral deal that both the EU and Japan have concluded so far. It employs a generalized variant of the Eaton-Kortum (2002) model, featuring multiple sectors, input-output linkages, services...

Three years ago, very few economists would have imagined that one of the newest and fastest growing research areas in international trade is the use of quantitative trade models to estimate the economic welfare losses from dissolutions of major countries' economic integration agreements (EIAs)....

How do firms of different sizes react to trade liberalization? Leading theories suggest that, amongst continuing exporters, lower trade costs should boost exports of smaller firms by the same or a greater rate than those of larger firms. However, studying the entry into force of the ambitious...

While traditional empirical models using determinants like size and trade costs are able to predict RTA formation reasonably well, we demonstrate that allowing for machine detected non-linear patterns helps to improve the predictive power of RTA formation substantially. We employ machine...

This paper sets up a model of trade, in which two countries with differing levels of technology specialize in the production of sub-stages of the global value chain. In the open economy, the technologically backward country exports intermediates in exchange for imports of a homogeneous...

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...

The global success of online search engines and social media is due to their free access and high level of quality. However, these features are supported by a business model that exploits personal user data to provide targeted advertising services to third parties. Does this business model...

We challenge the common practice of estimating gravity equations with time-interval data in order to capture dynamic-adjustment effects to trade-policy changes. Instead, we point to a series of advantages of using consecutive-year data recognizing dynamic-adjustment effects. Our analysis reveals...

Based on empirical evidence from cross-country survey data, we argue that the surge of trade in tasks over the last decades can explain increasing resistance to globalization in industrialized countries. In a traditional trade model of a small open economy, we demonstrate that public education...