We study the pro-competitive gains from international trade in a quantitative model with endogenously variable markups. We find that trade can significantly reduce markup distortions if two conditions are satisfied: (i) there is extensive misallocation and (ii) opening to trade exposes hitherto...

Over the last few decades there have been significant increases in student enrolments in Australian non-government schools. It has been suggested that this growth has been the outcome of government subsidies to non-government schools. Despite this significant funding school fees have also been...

Data for measuring poverty and income inequality are frequently available in a summary form that describes the proportion of income or expenditure for each of a number of population proportions. While various discrete measures can be applied directly to data in this limited form, these discrete...

We study the gains from trade in a model with endogenously variable markups. We show that the pro-competitive gains from trade are large if the economy is characterized by (i) extensive misallocation,i.e., large ineciencies associated with markups, and (ii)a weak pattern of cross-country...

We consider the canonical directed search framework in which sellers play pure strategies and assume that buyers play strategies that are monotone in prices, can remain inactive and choose to do so whenever their payoff from participating is zero regardless of what the other buyers do. We show...

This paper studies how much information can be revealed when agents with private information lack commitment to actions in a given mechanism as well as to the mechanism itself. In a two-person decision problem, agents are allowed to hold on to an outcome in one mechanism while they play another...

In this paper we demonstrate the construction of inverse test confidence intervals for the turning points in estimated nonlinear relationships by the use of the marginal or first derivative function. First, we outline the inverse test confidence interval approach. Then we examine the...

This paper studies endogenous market formation in a ?nancial trading model where strategic traders face information asymmetries and aggregate shocks. First, we show that negative participation externalities can arise for a large class of assets. In a decentralized process of market formation,...

This paper proposes a new method for forecast selection from a pool of many forecasts. The method uses conditional information as proposed by Giacomini and White (2006). It also extends their pairwise switching method to a situation with many forecasts. I apply the method to the monthly...

This paper explores the use of a loglinear tax and transfer function, displaying increasing marginal and average tax rates along with a means-tested transfer payment. The two parameters are a breakeven income threshold, where the average tax rate is zero, and a tax parameter equivalent to the...