The increasing returns revolution in trade is incomplete in an important respect --there exists no compelling empirical demonstration of the role of increasing returns in determining production and trade structure. One reason is that trade patterns of the canonical increasing returns models are...

A half-century of empirical work on the factor proportions theory has identified "paradoxes" and "mysteries", but has failed to devise simple amendments that bring theory and data inot reasonable congruence. Our study considers standard and novel hypotheses regarding the failures of the...

We consider trade between a flexible wage America and a rigid real wage Europe. In a benchmark case, a move from autarky to free trade doubles the European unemployment rate, while it raises the American unskilled wage to the high European level.

There are two principal theories of why countries trade: comparative advantage and increasing returns to scale. Yet there is no empirical work that assesses the relative importance of these two theories in accounting for production structure and trade. We use a framework that nests an increasing...

Does national market size matter for industrial structure? This has been suggested by theoretical work on "home market" effects, as in Krugman (1980, 1995). In this paper, I show that what previously was regarded as an assumption of convenience - transport costs only for the differentiated goods...

There are two principal theories of why countries trade: comparative advantage and increasing returns to scale. Yet there is no empirical work that assesses the relative importance of these two theories in accounting for production structure and trade. We use a framework that nests an increasing...

A half-century of empirical work on the factor proportions theory has but has failed to devise simple amendments that bring theory and data into reasonable congruence. Our study considers standard and novel hypotheses regarding the failures of the Heckscher-Ohlin-Vanek formulation and is the...

Atlanta's rail rapid transit system (MARTA), which began operations in 1979 and has cost U.S. taxpayers and residents of the Atlanta metropolitan area more than $3.5 billion (1990s), has been identified by advocates of new rail systems in other U.S. cities as one of the most successful rail...