This volume was prepared by Inga Heiland while she was working at the Ifo Institute. It was completed in July 2016 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich. It comprises five chapters addressing one or more aspects of international trade and...

This paper sets up a two country monopolistic competition model with intra-industry trade to study the effects of an exogenous differential in wage and social policies on the location of industry. Two model scenarios are considered. In the traditional one with physical capital, such a...

This volume was prepared by Sebastian Benz while he was working at the Ifo Institute. It was completed in December 2013 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich. It includes five self-contained chapters. All chapters discuss different...

The US economy is often referred to as the “banker to the world,” due to its unique role in supplying global reserve assets and funding foreign risky investment. This paper develops a general equilibrium model to analyze and quantify the contribution of this role to rising wealth...

How do firms' financial constraints, which restrict their borrowing, dynamically impact exports? This paper finds that after controlling for the endogeneity of financial constraints, constrained firms are less likely to export, and relaxing financial constraints leads to an increase in exports....

Trade liberalization has proceeded on the assumption that eventual aggregate welfare gains will exceed the losses. While compensatory mechanisms exist in most countries, they tend to be underfunded and ineffective. To begin to address this problem, the direct beneficiaries from trade...

The US is likely to be at ‘the front of the queue’ for a new trade deal with the UK after Brexit. This would require the UK to escape the constraints of the EU’s Customs Union and also be free to diverge from EU regulations. But if these two conditions are not met, many would question...

The paper examines the interaction among taxes on factors income, environmental quality and welfare. We construct a two-country regional block model with capital mobility and crossborder pollution. Pollution in the two countries is simultaneously abated by the private sector, in response to a...

The paper examines the interaction among taxes on factors income, environmental quality and welfare. We construct a two-country regional block model with capital mobility and crossborder pollution. Pollution in the two countries is simultaneously abated by the private sector, in response to a...

The phrase financial contagion draws on a concept whose root meaning lies in the field of epidemiology. Like almost all metaphors, this one has the power to illuminate and to mislead. Its referent is the spread of financial distress from one firm, market, asset class, nation, or geographical...