Vertical intra-industry trade accounts for a large share of trade between countries characterized by similar factor endowments. Moreover, it is observed even at a very disaggregated level of statistical classifications, suggesting that the traded products have similar factor intensities. This...

Vertical intra-industry trade (VIIT), i.e. trade in products that are differentiated by their quality, accounts for a very large share of total trade between similar countries. So far, the theoretical literature has identified one main determinant of this kind of trade, namely the difference in...

Vertical intra-industry trade (VIIT), i.e. trade in products that are differentiated by their quality, accounts for a very large share of total trade between similar countries. So far, the theoretical literature has identified one main determinant of this kind of trade, namely the difference in...

The Heckscher-Ohlin-Vanek (HOV) model in its strict form has been strongly rejected by the data. Relaxing some assumptions of the standard HOV model is key to find improvements in its performance. We apply Davis and Weinstein (2001) methodology to analyse the validity of the HOV model using...

Immiserizing growth is a long-term phenomenon that occurs when the gain in a country’s social welfare arising from economic growth is more than offset by the loss in such welfare associated with an adverse shift in the terms of trade. In one case explored many years ago by Jagdish...

The number of preferential trade agreements has greatly increased over the past two decades, yet most existing bilateral arrangements take the form of free trade areas, and less than ten percent can be considered to be fully fledged customs unions. This paper develops a political economy model...

Past empirical failures of the basic Heckscher-Ohlin-Vanek (HOV) model related to the inability of data to meet its restrictive assumptions, particularly identical international technologies and factor price equalization. Trefler (1993) tried to resuscitate HOV by introducing a simple...

All countries would agree to immediate global free trade if countries were compensated for any terms-of-trade losses with transfers from countries whose terms-of-trade improve, and if customs unions were required to have no effects on non-member countries. Global free trade with transfers is in...

This paper reviews the most significant recent developments in the theory of trade agreements. The paper offers an integrated approach to evaluating trade agreements, and uses the approach to present results on preferential and multilateral trade agreements. The paper identifies also several...

We build into a Ricardian model sectoral linkages, trade in intermediate goods, and sectoral heterogeneity in production to quantify the trade and welfare effects from tariff changes. We also propose a new method to estimate sectoral trade elasticities consistent with any trade model that...