In this paper the welfare effects of tariffs and import quotas in the presence of involuntary unemployment are derived and compared. The framework used is the standard model of a competitive small open economy with many goods and factors. Optimum levels of the respective trade policy instruments...

Empirical evidence of the impact of borders on international trade flows using the gravity equation approach abounds. This paper examines the empirical relevance of state borders in U.S. interstate trade for various specifications of the gravity equation. We find a large and economically...

In this paper, I use Canadian micro-data on individual workers to investigate the effect on wages of the tariff reductions mandated by the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA). The literature on industry wage premia has revealed that the industry of employment is an important determinant of...

We examine whether increased trade with countries with ineffective protection of intellectual property has contributed to the skill-deepening of the 1980s. We construct an index of effective protection of intellectual property at the country level, combining data on protection of patents and...

We analyze China's tariff rates at WTO accession using a political economy approach. A model drawing on Branstetter and Feenstra (<link/>) is used to derive an optimal tariff rate for each industry. The model predicts that a government would set a high tariff rate if an industry is of large stateowned...

Trade barriers can cause output to be diverted to other countries and into other products. We study the effect of a voluntary price restraint (VPR) on Mexican tomatoes entering the United States. The diversion caused by the VPR is statistically and economically significant - representing over...

Some supporters of antidumping have argued that this procedure serves as a kind of `safety valve' for protectionist pressure. In this paper, we investigate whether there is empirical evidence that the use of antidumping actions has contributed to ongoing tariff reductions over the period 1988 to...

In this paper the changes in trade patterns introduced by the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement are examined. Variation in the extent of tariff liberalization under the agreement is used to identify the impact of tariff liberalization on the growth of trade both with member countries and...

We develop an open economy general equilibrium model, with auctionbased directed search unemployment, to study the interactions of trade and unemployment. The theory ascribes all outcomes purely to the fundamentals of technology and endowment. If countries differ by <i>endowment</i>, trade makes both...

We provide the first firm-level evidence of the impact of the trade in producer services (`offshoring') on the labour market. Using a new data set from the UK that measures trade in services at the firm level, we find no evidence that importing intermediate services is associated with job losses...