After an overview of the literature on cultural differences acting as trade barrier, and examining the data on how European companies deal with these differences, cross-cultural literacy through learning foreign languages is suggested as an alternative to the practice of hiring immigrants. A...

Liberalization increases competitive pressures on domestic firms, creating incentives for reducing costs of production through technological progress. Through this channel, backward countries get a chance to narrow the technological gap with advanced countries. In this paper, the case of...

The slow pace of multilateral negotiations has given a greater impetus to regional trade arrangements (RTA) as countries are eager to take advantage of welfare enhancing trade creation effect of trade liberalization. At the same time, this approach raises concerns as due their discriminatory...

The paper analyses the distribution of unit values in clothing exports and imports to find results that are consistent all mainstream trade theories. Although richer countries on average export and import higher quality products, they import and export over a larger range of quality levels that...

National cultural distance construct has wide-spread use in the international business literature, with many applications. Despite its limitations as summarized by Shenkar (2001), the method in Kogut and Singh (1988) is commonly adopted by researchers to measure cultural distance. This article...

Given various significant benefits, not only countries but also regions within a country compete against each other in trying to attract foreign direct investments (FDI). While there are several studies explaining the factors behind a country's potential for foreign direct investment,...

I examine the varying responses of countries to foreign trade and direct investment liberalization on spatial concentration of their economic activity by taking into consideration moderating factors such as their market size and level of economic development. I argue that liberalization...

This paper analyzes the increase in transition countries' exports to their nontraditional trade partners. It uses four different measures of product differentiation to determine the extent to which dynamics in product variety explain this phenomenon. It is found that opening up to new trade...

After a short review of recent developments in gravity modeling and an overview of the liberalization agreements in Europe, this paper measures the trade creation and diversion effects of major European agreements based on the results of a correctly specified triple-indexed gravity model with...