Recent trade negotiations, both at the regional and multilateral level, have seen a resurgence of the issue of trade and labour standards. As the world economy becomes increasingly globalised and the volume of world trade flows keeps increasing between the North and the South, it is very likely...

This paper provides an analysis of outsourcing and trade in a spatial model à la Hotelling. In this setting, we discuss the trade-off between transport-cost-related disadvantages and outsourcing-induced production cost advantages of a large economy. The model gives a rich picture of possible...

We propose and apply methods to quantify the impact of national institutions on international trade and development. We are able to identify the direct impact of country-specific institutions on international trade within the structural gravity framework. Our approach naturally addresses the...

This paper develops a new open-economy endogenous growth model where technology diffusion allows for a stable and non-degenerate world income distribution. In accordance with the empirical literature, I find that country characteristics such as the social infrastructure, the degree of openness,...

According to the pollution haven hypotheses differences in environmental regulation affect trade flows and plant location. Specifically, environmental stringency should decrease exports and increase imports of "dirty" goods. This paper estimates a gravity model to establish whether the...

We analyze the effect of the increase in trade exposure induced by the rise of China and the transformation of Eastern Europe on collective bargaining coverage of German plants in the period 1996–2008. We exploit cross-industry variation in trade exposure and use trade flows of other...