We develop a new model of trade in which educational institutions drive comparative advantage and determine the distribution of human capital within and across countries. Our framework exploits a multiplicity of sectors and the continuous support of human capital choices to demonstrate that...

We use a dynamic trade model with two sectors and two types of workers to analyze the optimal setting of income-generating tariffs. This approach allows us to take account of adjustment dynamics, distributional aspects and the time horizon of policy makers and workers. In response to a...

With ever-increasing political tensions between China and Russia on one side and the EU and the US on the other, it only seems a matter of time until protectionist policies cause a decoupling of global value chains. This paper uses a computable general equilibrium trade model calibrated with the...

Trade liberalization can imply slow and long adjustment processes. Taking account of these adjustment processes can change the evaluation of trade policy, especially when policy makers care more about the next couple of years than the infinite future. In this paper I analyze the setting of...

Why are empirically observed tariffs so much lower than theoretically calculated Nash-equilibrium tariffs? We argue that this gap can be narrowed by using a dynamic model instead of a static model. This approach has two advantages. (i) It allows us to take account of the transitional process...

Recently, the world economy has seen its greatest down turn since World War II. Although not as bad as during the Great Depression, there was still a worrisome increase in protectionist measures, in an attempt to mitigate the economic downturn. Protectionism can have many different faces. It can...

This paper investigates the elusive role of productivity heterogeneity in new trade models in the trade and environment nexus. We contrast the Eaton-Kortum and the Melitz models with firm heterogeneity to the Armington and Krugman models without heterogeneity. We show that if firms have a...

Trade in intermediate goods as one possible link between rising trade and foreign direct investment is examined. To explain growing intermediate goods trade, three hypotheses are brought forward: outsourcing, global sourcing and the increasing importance of MNE networks. These hypotheses are...

The labour markets in the developed countries have experienced two fundamental changes in recent years. Firstly, high-skilled workers have gained at the expense of low-skilled workers, which manifests itself in a rising skill premium and/or a rising disparity in the unemployment rates of these...

This paper investigates Samuelson's (JEP, 2004) argument that technical progress of the trade partner may hurt the home country. We illustrate this prospect in a simple Ricardian model for sitations with outward knowledge spillovers. Within this framework Samuelson's Act II effects may occur....