We demonstrate that the Varian (1980) model of sales has a unique Nash equilibrium when firms incur costly advertising to compete for informed consumers. The equilibrium is symmetric. In particular, with costly advertising, the asymmetric equilibria highlighted by Baye et al. (1992) do not arise.

This paper estimates the effects of trade integration between China and Mercosur on employment. The case of Argentina, in particular, is investigated. Highly disaggregated data at the industry level is used for the first time to estimate labor demand elasticities in order to estimate the effects...

A survey of trade elasticities published for Latin American economies is conducted. Articles surveyed were published between 1975 and 1997. They include data from the mid-1950s through the mid-1990s. Imports are found to be highly income elastic as well as very price inelastic. Relatively fewer...

This paper presents the first empirical test with German establishment level data of a hypothesis derived by Helpman, Melitz and Yeaple in a model that explains the decision of heterogeneous firms to serve foreign markets either trough exports or foreign direct investment: only the more...

The World Trade Organization, which came into existence at the conclusion of the Uruguay Round, is in charge of administering a plethora of new trade rules. The main thrust of the new rules is to reduce or abolish tariffs and quotas on a wide range of products. Some tariffs and quotas were...

This paper analyzes the effects of EU integration on intra-EU trade volumes with a special focus on trade within and between the core and the periphery countries. We find that in all phases of integration core-periphery and intra-periphery growth of trade has experienced stronger positive...

Empirical trade equations estimated using aggregate data may impose ill- advised coefficient restrictions. Export demand equations are estimated using quarterly data for bilateral trade flows between the United States and Mexico. The sample period is 1981-1994. Right-hand-side variables include...

Combining Balassa–Samuelson effects with strategic complementarities between prices of tradables and non-tradables yields a novel determinant of tradables’ prices. A larger productivity difference between tradables and non-tradables raises the non-tradables’ price. With strategic...

Price dispersion of US imports are investigated across US districts of entry. Markups explain about 31% of price dispersion, while marginal costs of production explain about 69%; effects of trade costs, for which we have actual data, are almost none.

We show that, in general, consistent estimates of cost pass-through are not obtained from reduced-form regressions of price on cost. We derive a formal approximation for the bias that arises even under standard orthogonality conditions. We provide guidance on the conditions under which bias may...