In this keynote speech, I ask the question: Does the cost of capital differ for firms located in different countries? I argue that there are two ways to look at the cost of capital. First, there is the neo-classical perspective, which assumes that there are no agency problems. In integrated...

Most of the expansion of global trade during the last three decades has been of the North-South kind – between capital-abundant developed and labour-abundant developing countries. Based on this observation, I argue that the recent growth of world trade is best understood from a...

Bhagwati and Brecher (1980) showed that when the relative amount of foreign-owned factors in the host country is sufficiently large as to induce a change in the direction of the trade pattern, immiserising tariff reductions may occur. Here it is shown that in the mirror case when foreign-owned...

In this paper we show that price equalization does not imply zero barriers to trade. There are many barrier combinations that deliver price equalization, but each combination implies a different volume of trade. We demonstrate this first theoretically in a simple two-country model and then...

The rush for land acquisition—primarily driven by food shortage and run for agrofuel—has drawn considerable attention. Some documents published in late 2009, 2010, and 2011 report this phenomenon. Terminological differences aside, it is—quite distinct from materials or service...

This study attempts to analyze the impact of intra regional trade agreement on FDI inflows in Southeast Asia. The agreement is ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA). The observed countries are Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. These three countries have been selected based on several considerations....

This paper provides a model to consider the conditions under which an acceptance of foreign capital is welfare enhancing in a multi-commodity multi-factor framework. Contrary to the pessimistic conventional wisdom of capital imports and welfare, we provide a justification for the acceptance of...