Empirical research on the linkage between trade openness and productivity growth takes center stage in most studies in search for the effects of trade liberalization on economic progress. This is true for both the firm level and for aggregate analyses. There exist various channels through which...

We analyze the impact of economic integration on the activities of multinational enterprises in a general equilibrium model with asymmetric countries. Foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows are likely only to the extent that multinationals have not already shifted production to the integrating...

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...

How to best utilize the wide range of estimates of elasticities that characterize econometric literature when using calibrated models is the issue we address here through a blending of econometrics and calibration into calibmetrics. Econometrically generated literature based elasticity...

We discuss the role of contracting impediments created by the existence of national borders on open economy growth. In a two-good neoclassical Ramsey growth model with lack of enforcement on international trade contracts we show that endogenous trading constraints with positive trade may arise...

Trade is shown to increase economic growth purely through comparative advantage without recourse to scale effects, technology transfer, research and development, or even international investment. The resulting growth rates are those that would result from technology transfer, even though no...

This paper builds a multi-sector, three country (centre and two peripheries), New Economic Geography model, where industrial sectors differ in the degree of scale economies and skill-intensity. The model incorporates, for the first time in this class of models, payments to the unemployed in each...

This paper presents a model of economic growth where products are invented and patented, and where production involves fixed costs at the location of the plant. The model is used to assess the effects of instantaneous integration of a small, autarkic country into a larger economy on a) consumer...

We introduce relative concerns in the form of conspicuous consumption in a standard economic geography model a la Krugman. The primary intuition is that conspicuous consumption imposes a negative externality on some agents and generates a centrifugal force. We show that this is not always the...

I consider the case where the conservation of land yields utility through biodiversity, firms improve their efficiency by in-house R&D and a large number of countries establish a self-interested government for biodiversity management. I compare the regulation of land use with direct subsidies...