This paper analyzes competition for capital between welfare-maximizing governments in a framework with agglomeration tendencies and asymmetric unionization. We find that a unionized country's government finds it optimal to use tax policy to induce industry to relocate towards a location with a...

The aim of this paper is to explore the role of institutional determinants of international comparative advantage. Starting from a theoretically well founded general equilibrium framework, where specialization depends on relative factor endowments and technological differences, we study the...

We show that the Brazilian trade liberalization in the early 1990s led to a permanent relative decline in the vote share of left-wing presidential candidates in the regions more affected by the tariff cuts. This happened even though the shock, implemented by a right-wing party, induced a...

I examine how globalization affects wages and welfare in a general equilibrium model of international trade with partly oligopolistic markets. Globalization is modeled as reducing trade costs or opening up shielded sectors to trade. There is a national or international common agency that...

I examine how globalization affects wages and welfare in a general equilibrium model of international trade with partly oligopolistic markets. Globalization is modeled as reducing trade costs or opening up shielded sectors to trade. There is a national or international common agency that...

We analyze unionized firms' incentives to outsource intermediate goods production to foreign (low-cost) subcontractors. Such outsourcing leads to increased wages for the remaining inhouse production. We find that stronger unions, which imply higher domestic wages, reduce incentives for...

This paper deals with firms' decision related to international activities in a twocountry oligopoly model with a homogeneous product and unionized labor markets. Using a three-stage non-cooperative game with firms being first movers, it is found that firms' strategies are affected by the scale...

We develop a simple framework to show the effects of trade cost reduction on unionized wage, employment and domestic welfare when a domestic firm strategically chooses the amount of formal in-house production and subcontracting to the informal sector. We show that a lower trade cost increases...