Abstract This paper presents a two-country intra-industry trade model with bilateral ad valorem tariffs and fixed export costs that are heterogeneous across firms. In this model not all firms will choose to export. We examine the effects of reciprocal changes in the tariff and the fixed export...

This paper presents a two-country intra-industry trade model with bilateral ad valorem tariffs and fixed export costs that are heterogeneous across firms. In this model not all firms will choose to export. We examine the effects of reciprocal changes in the tariff and the fixed export barrier on...

Abstract This paper looks at a model in which two countries trade agricultural and manufactured commodities. The manufactured-goods sector produces with increasing returns to scale under conditions of monopolistic competition. It is shown that an increase in land endowment (or an increase in...

Price-setting models with monopolistic competition and costs of changing prices exhibit coordination failure: in response to a monetary policy shock, individual agents lack incentives to change prices even when it would be Pareto-improving if all agents did so. The potential welfare gains are in...

This paper examines ways of taxing monopolistically competitive firms that pollute the environment. There are two sources of welfare loss: production externalities and product selection bias associated with fixed costs. We argue that the optimal firm specific tax is always, strictly speaking,...

This paper presents a novel explanation of the decision by a firm to make an input within the firm rather than to out-source the production to another firm. Due to the limited attention of the manager/entrepreneur, time spent overseeing production in-house has an opportunity cost: the neglect of...

Larry Lessig flagellates himself about losing the Eldred case, which upheld the legality of copyright extensions. He shouldn’t: Eldred was unwinnable. (The Court’s 7-2 vote is one clue). Besides, the worst of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act’s effects can still be made to...

Standard economic intuition of revealed preference implies that when two parties freely enter into a contract then neither should be worse off. In this study, we develop a simple model showing that introducing the opportunity to contract can lower welfare for some, and perhaps all, contracting...

Zusammenfassung Die Bedeutung von Transaktionskosten für die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung war in den letzten Jahrzehnten Gegenstand zahlreicher ökonomischer Forschungsansätze. Nur ein sehr kleiner Teil davon wählte eine empirische Herangehensweise. Dieser Aufsatz beginnt mit einem kurzen...

The paper is based on the New Institutional Economic Theory, which emphasizes institutions as a vital component in the creation of wealth and economic growth. It is widely accepted that formal institutions change rapidly through political and legislative decisions. Informal institutions are...