This paper explores the economic impacts of preferential trade agreements, conditional on their level of ambition. We cluster 278 agreements, encompassing 910 provisions over 18 policy areas and estimate the trade elasticity for the different clusters. We then use these elasticities in a series...

We analyse optimal abatement and carbon pricing strategies under a variety of economic, temperature and damage risks. Economic growth, convex damages and temperature-dependent risks of climatic tipping points lead to higher growth rates of carbon prices, but gradual resolution of uncertainty...

This paper examines the usefulness of shadow rates to measure the monetary policy stance by comparing them to the official policy rates and those implied by three types of Taylor rules in both inflation targeting countries (the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) and others that have only...

Worldwide, the overwhelming majority of large horizontal mergers are cleared by antitrust authorities unconditionally. The presumption seems to be that efficiencies from these mergers are sizeable. We calculate the compensating efficiencies that would prevent a merger from harming consumers for...

The paper addresses the question what effects the enlargement of a monetary union will have on necessary structural refoms in the (low distortion) member countries and the (high distortion) candidate country. While monetary union lowers reforms in the candidate country, members of the monetary...

The paper develops a unified general equilibrium model including savings with overlapping generations, investment and search unemployment. Long-run analytical results for the small open economy identify capital accumulation as a prime transmission channel. The effects of integration on...

The extent of government deficits and debt has been one of the most debated issues in recent years. However, very little has been contributed about their dynamics . Yet, the issue of entering into and exiting from excessive deficits will be critical in the European monetary union since the...

A wide variety of social protection systems coexist within the EU. Some member states provide social insurance that is of Beveridgean inspiration (with universal and more or less flat benefits), while others offer a system that is mainly Bismarckian (with benefits related to past contributions)....

We introduce a "smart" cap and trade system that eliminates the welfare costs of asymmetric information (“uncertainty”). This cap responds endogenously to technology or macroeconomic shocks, relying on the market price of certificates to aggregate information. It allows policy makers to...

An increasing body of empirical evidence is documenting trends toward rising concentration, profits, and markups in many industries around the world since the 1980s. Two major criticisms of these studies is that concentration and market shares are poorly measured at the national industry level...