This paper characterizes analytically the optimal tariff of a large one-sector economy with monopolistic competition and firm heterogeneity in general equilibrium, thereby extending the small-country results of Demidova and Rodriguez-Clare (JIE, 2009) and the homogeneous firms framework of Gros...

Increasing-returns-to-scale imperfect competition trade models predict a more than proportionate relationship between the larger country’s share in world endowments and its share in producing firms: the so called home market effect (HME). While this result plays a key role in empirical...

In the two-country Melitz (2003) model, unilateral trade liberalization is often cast as a reduction of iceberg transportation costs and wages are determined by a linear outside sector. We show that welfare results reverse when wages adjust and trade frictions are revenue-generating tariffs.

Recent quantitative trade models treat import tariffs as pure cost shifters so that their effects are similar to iceberg trade costs. We introduce revenue-generating import tariffs, which act as demand shifters, into the framework of Arkolakis, Costinot and Rodriguez-Clare (2012), and generalize...

The business literature suggests that exporters either use trade intermediaries or own foreign sales representations. Standard trade models are silent about this choice. We develop a model where producers differ with respect to competitive advantage and where trade intermediaries arise...

The business literature and recent descriptive evidence show that exporting firms typically require the help of foreign trade intermediaries or need to set up own foreign wholesale affiliates. In contrast, conventional trade theory models assume that producers can directly access foreign...

Trade economists traditionally study the effect of lower variable trade costs. While increasingly important politically, technical barriers to trade (TBTs) have received less attention. Viewing TBTs as fixed regulatory costs related to the entry into export markets, we use a model with...

In New Trade Theory models, the larger region hosts an overproportionate share of producers. This Home Market Effect (HME) exacerbates regional income discrepancies caused by trade frictions or technology differences. With homogeneous firms, it requires inter-industry reallocations to emerge. We...

Member countries of a currency union like the euro area have absorbed asymmetric shocks in ways that are inconsistent with a common nominal anchor. Based on a reformulation of the gravity model that allows for such bilateral misalignment, we disentangle the conventional microeconomic trade...

Arkolakis, Costinot and Rodriguez-Clare (ACR, 2012) prove that, conditional on the change in openness, the welfare gains from foreign trade reforms are quantitatively identical across single-sector trade models with radically different micro-foundations. We generalize this result to domestic and...