Optimal climate policy is studied. Coal, the abundant resource, contributes more CO2 per unit of energy than the exhaustible resource, oil. We characterize the optimal sequencing oil and coal and departures from the Herfindahl rule. “Preference reversal” can take place. If coal is very dirty...

To control for product quality and exchange rate effects, we use the Japanese regional data to study the Penn effect – the positive relationship between price and income levels. Comparable with the evidence from international data, the Penn effect is significant in the Japanese prefectural...

Do elderly workers retire early voluntarily, or are they induced (or even forced) by their employees? To establish the relevance of the labor demand component in retirement decisions, we consider a trade liberalization between Switzerland and the EU – the Mutual Recognition Agreement (MRA). A...

In the spirit of Harberger, we apply a dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) model and estimate the excess burden stemming from the tax-induced distortion in the allocation of capital across the corporate and the non-corporate sectors in Germany. In doing so, we perform a counterfactual...

When trading, firms choose between different payment contracts. As shown theoretically in Schmidt-Eisenlohr (forthcoming), this allows firms in international trade to optimally trade-off differences in financing costs and enforcement across countries. This paper provides evidence from a large...

The paper investigates survival patterns of Brazilian franchising firms during the 1994-1999 period. First, at a more descriptive level one considered the (percentage) survival of newly created franchisors in the following years. The evidence indicated a drastic decay in survival after only a...

Recent empirical studies suggest a need for a flexible patent regime responding to industry characteristics. In practice, sector-specific modifications of patent strength already exist but lack theoretical foundation. This paper intends to make up for this neglect by scrutinizing in what...

This paper studies the implications for climate policy of the interactions between environmental and knowledge externalities. Using a numerical analysis performed with the hybrid integrated assessment model WITCH, extended to include mutual spillovers between the energy and the non-energy...

Helpman, Melitz and Rubinstein (2008) derive gravity equations to estimate effects of trade barriers on the intensive and extensive margins of trade. They exploit the frequency of zeros in aggregate bilateral trade data to identify effects on the extensive margin and to obtain controls for firm...

Quantitative results from a large class of international trade models depend critically on the elasticity of trade with respect to trade frictions. We develop a simulated method of moments estimator to estimate this elasticity from disaggregate price and trade-flow data using the Ricardian...