We investigate how protectionist policies influence short-run economic growth. Our empirical strategy exploits an extraordinary tax scandal that gave rise to an unexpected change of government in Sweden. A free-trade majority in parliament was overturned by a protectionist majority in 1887. We...

The present paper studies the modelling of inter-regional trade flows in the newly developed general equilibrium model of European Commission, Rhomolo. In contrast to international trade, usually, trade of goods and services between regions is not recorded statistically. As a result, no...

This study considers endogenous determination of domestic standards on products that cause negative consumption externalities in the presence of a preferential trade agreement (PTA) in a three-country world. In particular, we examine how a PTA affects the optimal levels of external tariffs and...

Why are trade agreements regional? I address this question in a model of oligopoly featuring product variety. Tariffs have the effect of manipulating a country's terms of trade and shifting profits towards the domestic market at the expense of foreign trade partners. Countries endogenously form...

We develop a theory of economic disintegration that features both endogenously formed tax and trade policies. We show very generally that the economic disintegration of a country from an economic union leads to a deeper integration of international trade institutions. Moreover, we set up a...

The European Neighborhood Policy (ENP), launched in 2004, is a unified European Union (EU) policy framework towards the EU neighboring (ENP) countries. The objective of the ENP is to strengthen the prosperity, stability and security of the (enlarged) EU countries and the ENP countries. Even...

During the last century there has been a huge reduction in trade costs at almost every spatial scale impulsed not only by technological advances applied to transport and communication systems, but also by the spread of regional trade agreements and other related schemes. This estringent fall has...

Using quarterly data of 58 countries, this paper provides empirical evidence that mobile phone diffusion from 2007 to 2009 is positively influenced by international network effects. Direct and indirect network effects are a result of the international standadization of telecommunication...

In this paper, we study how contract enforcement at the local level affects a firm's ability to supply customised intermediate inputs to foreign firms. Using Italian firm-level data, we show that firms located in courts with higher judicial trial length in civil disputes, which is our measure of...

This paper explores the quantitative consequences of transatlantic trade liberalization envisioned in a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the United States and the European Union. Our key innovation is to develop a new quantitative spatial trade model and to use an...