This paper studies how a positive export shock - the sharp increase in garment-sector exports that began at the end of the Multifibre Arrangement (MFA) - spread through Bangladesh's labor markets. Although the end of the MFA was arguably exogenous to Bangladesh, we instrument export demand with...

Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) between the European Union (EU) and trade partners go far beyond mere elimination of tariffs to include such diverse issues as non-tariff barriers, competition legislation, investment protection, and more. Implementing such provisions requires deep institutional and...

Empirical literature on the effect of Contract Farming (CF) on economic development of a Less Developed Economy (LDC) is divided on the basic issue of concern for the policy makers in LDCs: should CF be encouraged, and if so, under what circumstances? Broadly, there are both intermediate (yield,...

This paper examines the background of Article 66.2 of the TRIPS Agreement, the nature of this obligation on developed country Members that pertains to the promotion of technology transfer to LDC Members and how it is being implemented and how such implementation is being monitored in the TRIPS...

I study welfare and distributional effects of import tariffs in a two-country asymmetric general oligopolistic equilibrium trade model. Tariffs have an anti-competitive effect that reduces labor demand because firms want to shorten supply. Unilaterally increasing the import tariff in absence of...

This paper analyses how international outsourcing has affected the relative demand for low skilled workers in Germany during the 1990s. In contrast to previous empirical work, the single elements of the input-output-matrix are used to disentangle international outsourcing and trade in final...

We analyze the economic factors which have contributed to the dramatic decline of the employment share of unskilled labor in German manufacturing, in particular the role played by the relatively rigid earnings structure. Potential effects of intensified international competition and skill-biased...