How do democratic institutions influence international trade policy? This article highlights conceptual challenges confronting the study of democracy and trade. Using a game theoretic model, I aim to spell out the precise effect of democratic legislative constraints on trade. In contrast to the...

Physical considerations alone cannot explain the volatile behavior of resource prices, or the effects these have on different regions of the world. An optimization analysis may not suffice either, since typically there are several distinct objectives: conservation, cost-minimization, and the...

Over the past 50 years, the European Union (EU) has dramatically increased its policy-making power. However, there remains considerable variation over time as well as across policy areas in the relative power of the EU and the member states. The variation is likely to influence EU-wide...

This paper incorporates learning and reputation building into a simple dynamic stochastic model of international trade with asymmetric information. We use the model to study a bilateral trade flow influenced significantly by learning and reputation, namely U.S. imports of Japanese cars over the...

This theoretical paper intends to provide an explanation of the implementation of behind-the-border policies, border policies, and of the inefficiency of trade negotiations. We consider a general equilibrium model of international trade with two identical countries, two commodities, a...

This paper introduces incomplete information into recent analyses of strategic environmental policy. It is shown how asymmetric information between planners and producers affects national incentives to impose strategic environmental standards on domestic industries in international oligopolistic...

In this paper we extend a model by A. Ulph (1997) on the relationship between free trade agreements, environmental regulation and trade under imperfect competition. Ulph's model focused on the effectiveness of harmonisation policies against ecological dumping. It turned out that harmonised...