The standard race-to-the-bottom result is curious in one respect. If a nation wants to attract foreign capital, providing the optimal level of public amenities (and thus charging the optimal tax rate) would seem optimal. This conjecture fails in the standard tax competition model since foreign...

Based on the recent trade models of the Heterogeneous Firms Trade (HFT) model and the Quality Heterogeneous Firms Trade (QHFT) model, we classify export goods (at the HS 6-digit level of disaggregation) by quality and price competition. We find a high proportions of quality-competition goods for...

This paper has two purposes. It introduces a direct approach to policy analysis in endogenous growth models - the q-theory approach - and uses this to illustrate several new openness-and-growth links that appear when we enrich the economic content of the early trade and growth models. The...

This paper posits a formal political economy model where the principle of reciprocity in multilateral trade talks results in the gradual elimination of tariffs. Reciprocity trade talks turn each nation’s exporters into anti-protectionists at home; they lower foreign tariffs by convincing their...

Regional liberalization sweeps the globe like wildfire while multilateral trade talks proceed at a glacial pace. Why are countries eager to liberalize regionally but reluctant to do so multilaterally? The answer of the GATT-is-dead school is that multilateralism is too cumbersome for...

Small transaction costs and uncertainty imply that optimal cross-currency interest rate speculation is marked by a first-order hysteresis band. Consequently uncovered interest parity does not hold and market-efficiency tests based on it are mis-specified. Indeed, measured prediction errors are a...

This paper presents a model in which long-run growth and industrial location are jointly endogenous. Specifically, it introduces Romer-Grossman-Helpman endogenous growth into Krugman’s core-periphery model with footloose labour. The paper focuses on stability of the symmetric equilibrium,...

The traditional explanation of resurgence regionalism nations rests on two pillars. Regionalism is: (i) due to frustration with the WTO process (thought to be too cumbersome for today’s trade issues); and (ii) due to the United States’ conversion from devoted multilateralist to ardent...

Recent events, historical evidence and geographical proximity suggest that the six EFTAns and twelve Central and East European countries (CEECs) are natural trading partners. This paper evaluates this suggestion by estimating the potential for EFTA-CEEC trade using the gravity model of Wang and...

Melitz (2003) demonstrates that greater trade openness raises industry productivity via a selection effect and via a production re-allocation effect. Our comment points out that the set-up assumed in the Melitz model displays a trade off between static and dynamic efficiency gains. That is,...