Africa's export performance has been extremely poor in recent years. Its share of world exports has declined and most countries are highly dependent on a narrow range of primary commodities for export earnings. This paper looks at factors that affect the export performance of manufacturing...

Consumers regularly have to choose between a pay-per-use and a flat-rate option. Due to the increasing number and range of (digital) services, the frequency at which consumers have to make tariff-choice decisions to use these services has become even more prevalent. Prior work has demonstrated...

This paper investigates the issue of the optimal tariff policy of the domestic country ("North") in an environment in which its trade with the foreign country ("South") is accompanied by a leakage of technological information (spillovers). Three duopoly games were considered. The first one views...

Using a standard complete specialization model of a small open economy within a rigorous intertemporal optimization framework with contract- based wage rigidity, we show that permanent tariffs may lead to a current account deterioration and a fall in employment, contradicting most of the...

While quotas can be expressed in tariff-equivalent terms and have identical economic effects under some conditions, they do not share the same welfare implications with tariffs in the presence of a piecemeal reform (second-best). In this paper we show that this non-welfare equivalence persists...

This paper examines the impact of China's falling import tariffs on the organization of exports between ordinary and processing trade. These trade forms differ in terms of tariff treatment and the ability of firms to sell on the domestic market. At the industry level, we find that falling input...

A highly diversified trade tariff menu may fuel bribe-taking behavior. Setting trade tariff rates at a uniform level limits public officials' ability to extract bribes from importers.By explicitly accounting for the interaction between importers and corrupt customs officials, Gatti argues that...