Welfare gains from increasing product variety are an important  source of the gains from international trade. Recent empirical studies have largely focused on measuring the gains from an increased variety of imports. Trade theory, however,  suggests that international trade heavily affects the...

Why do some countries join the EU earlier than others, why do others wait? Inorder to answer this question we apply the theory of investment under uncertainty (Dixit andPindyck, 1994) to the decision on EU-membership. We develop a simplified model of twoperiods to study how the value of waiting...

In Medien und Öffentlichkeit ist die Meinung, dass die infolge von Globalisierung und Strukturwandel frei- gesetzten Arbeitskräfte zu den Verlierern der Globalisierung gehörten, weit verbreitet. Gemäss Handelsthe- orie muss dem allerdings nicht so sein. Schliesslich führt die Globalisierung...

This paper presents a framework to assess the relative importance of three key sources of productivity growth that research on international trade focuses on: (i) inter-industry specialisation; (ii) intra-industry reallocation of resources across heterogeneous firms, including firm entry and...

This paper argues that economic competition and political contestability are two key determinants of the successful development of the Swiss economy in the nineteenth and twentieth century. We describe how Switzerland evolved from a relatively poor country with no natural resources and net...

This article challenges the view that a lack of competition and a high level of regulations are the main causes of Switzerland's high prices. First, we point out a number of stylized facts which are inconsistent with this popular view. Second, we econometrically asses the "competition-regulation...

Why do some countries join the EU earlier than others, why do others wait? In order to answer this question we apply the theory of investment under uncertainty (Dixit and Pindyck, 1994) to the decision on EU-membership. We develop a simplified model of two periods to study how the value of...