Technical barriers (standards), import licenses and tariffs may be deployed as means of limiting the market access of foreign firms. The present paper examines these measures in a setting of monopolistic competition. We find that, if protection focuses predominantly on the number of foreign...

Recent literature has emphasized the importance of transaction costs and infrastructure in explaining trade, access to markets, and regional cooperation under globalization. For most Asian countries, transaction costs are a greater barrier to trade integration than import tariffs. By estimating...

This paper examines the impact of market integration in the presence of a labor union. Effects on wages, employment, product price, firm profits, and union rents are analyzed. Both the theoretical model as well as numerical sim - ulations show the importance of factors such as the product demand...

We consider the impact of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) on horizontal foreign direct investment (FDI) coming from parent countries outside the PTA. While easier access to a larger market due to a PTA may justify new FDI, preexisting investments may be rationalized as firms concentrate...

The influence of data aggregation on applied trade theory may not be generally appreciated. Aggregation can have a direct impact on the direction of trade, factor intensity, factor abundance, factor substitution, product differentiation, and intra-industry trade. This paper develops some...

Tariff literature on third-degree price discrimination remains only lightly explored. The purpose of the paper is to investigate whether there exist optimum tariffs in the presence of different demand elasticities. We explore (i) the case of optimum uniform ad valorem tariff, and (ii) the case...

International Transport Services (ITS) play an important role in influencing international trade flows. This paper develops an analytical framework in which ITS costs are endogenously determined. It shows that ITS sector liberalization foster international trade very much the same way tariff...

According to the conventional home-market effect, free trade tends to shrink the market share for a small economy in differentiated manufacturing goods, and in the extreme leads to a complete hollowing-out of the industry in a small economy. This paper considers the technology difference between...

Preferential trade agreements (PTAs) usually result in increased trade amongst member countries and lower prices within the PTA. Thus the markets are assumed to be “more competitive” because lower prices are taken to imply “decreased market power” due to a reduction in price-cost...

This paper introduces a more sophisticated two-sector model of endogenous long-run growth without scale effects. The world economy consists of two similarly developed countries both of which are capable of producing manufacturings and services. The knowledge-based services as intermediate inputs...