This paper constructs a dynamic scale-free North-South model of trade with endogenous innovation. In the North two types of R&D races take place simultaneously within each industry. One is local-sourcing-targeted R&D race, which results in the winner firm manufacturing in the North. The other is...

This paper links firms’ endogenous quality choice to worker effort and efficiency wages. The model generates two distinct features: effort is rewarded and quality is rewarded. Then firms with higher monitoring accuracy produce higher quality and pay higher wages. When trade is opened, while...

This paper examines how impatience interacts with inequalities in economic devel- opment. In a society of intrinsic inequality, we show that (i) poor households tend to bene…t more from positive shocks under decreasing marginal impatience (DMI) than un- der constant marginal impatience (CMI)...

This paper characterizes the interactions among studying abroad, return migration, and capital accumulation, in a two-country overlapping generations model with households of heterogeneous ability. The model exhibits positive selection of migration status (i.e., permanent, return, and...

This paper develops a general equilibrium model with a vertical production structure to examine the relationship between offshore outsourcing and international migration,especially emphasizing their effects on the wages of skilled and unskilled workers. Two-way outsourcing (simultaneous...

Using the labor union's bargaining power as an indication of government policy on labor standards issues, we analyze the competition between a domestic (North) firm and a foreign (South) firm, and their relationship with optimal labor standards (LS). First, we show that the optimal level of LS...

This paper analyzes foreign-direct-investment (FDI) competition in a three-country framework: two Northern countries and one Southern country. We have in mind the competition of Airbus and Boeing (or GM and Volkswagen) in a developing country. The host-country government endogeneizes tariffs,...

This paper models the economic aspects of labor standards in an oligopolistic framework of three countries, incorporating labor-management negotiations in the North and monopsonic labor markets in Southern countries. Different from the literature, a higher LS not only requires a higher cost, but...

We formulate a two-country, two-good, two-factor, two-period-lived overlapping generations model to examine how population aging determines the pattern of and gains from trade. We obtain two main results. First, the aging country endogenously becomes a small country exporting the...

The paper embeds child labor in a standard two-sector general-equilibrium model of a small open economy facing perfectly competitive markets, efficiency wages, and free-trade. The modern sector produces a homogeneous good using skilled adult labor and capital, and offers effort-based efficiency...