In this paper it is argued that there is an important protectionist bias inherent in free trade agreements which is not present in custom unions. In any customs union or free trade agreement, one of the critical issues concerns "rules of origin." In a free trade agreement rules of origin have an...

The market access and welfare effects of Free Trade Areas (FTAs) without Rules of Origin (ROOs) are studied. We consider both the final and intermediate goods markets and their interlinkage. The FTA weakly reduces all tariffs and prices within the FTA. This raises quantity demanded and reduces...

This paper focuses on the effects of rules of origin in Free Trade Areas. We first point out that even rules of origin which are not restrictive, namely those which do not raise costs of production, have very pronounced effects on trade and investment flows. We then look at some different ways...

We develop a model to study the behavior of firms in a Free Trade Area with Rules of Origin and the consequences of this behavior on the market equilibrium and outcome. We show that firms will choose to specialize, and that an FTA with strict ROOs on the intermediate good raises imports and...

Regional trade agreements must specify domestic-content rules (rules of origin) that define the conditions under which a good qualifies as 'domestic' and so may be freely traded within the block. The paper analyzes such rules, focussing in particular on oligopolistic industries in which foreign...

Japanese public pension benefits, which were distributed quarterly through February 1990 and every other month since then, induce substantial but predictable income fluctuations. The relative magnitude of the payments combined with the delay between payments yields a stronger test of the...

We study the impact of nationalism and interstate frictions on international economic relations by analyzing market reaction to adverse shocks to Sino-Japanese relations in 2005 and 2010. Japanese companies with high China exposure suffer relative declines during each event window; a symmetric...