With the help of a simple model of production and trade, we examine the differential impact of tariff escalation on skilled and unskilled wages in an economy. Our findings provide a lobbying-based explanation of the prevalence of tariff escalation in developed countries. It also predicts the...

In spite of widespread tariff reductions, intra-African borders remain thick. Regional trade is inhibited by inadequate transportation infrastructure, but also by various government-imposed measures. This paper combines price data from the World Bank’s International Comparison Project (ICP)...

Greater trade integration within Middle East and North Africa region is expected to happen through the completion of the Pan-Arab Free Trade Agreement. However; recent studies suggest that when resource rich and resource poor countries give preferences to each other; as in PAFTA; the resource...

This paper examines the trade policy response of Latin American governments to the rapid growth of China and India in world markets. To explain higher protection in sectors where a large share is imported from these countries, we extend the 'protection for sale' model to allow for different...

We use a multi-country asymmetric oligopolistic framework for segmented markets to study the welfare effects of reducing tariff discriminations - which we call a move towards Most Favored Nation tariffs. Both unilateral and multilateral reforms are considered. We investigate this issue under...

This paper develops a general equilibrium 2x2 Ricardian model that demonstrates the possibility of immiserising growth as a result of a productivity improvement in a country¡¯s export industry. The model also shows that immiserising growth can be avoided by improving the productivity of the...

In a Ricardian model with general distributions of industry efficiencies, the welfare gains from trade can be decomposed into a selection and a reallocation effect. The former is the change in average efficiency due to the selection of industries that survive international competition. The...

More than 170 years ago, Frédéric Bastiat noted in his masterly work Economic Sophisms that the “opposition to free trade rests upon errors, or, if you prefer, upon half-truths.”1 Ever since Adam Smith successfully replaced mercantilist orthodoxy with free trade doctrine in his celebrated...

This paper examines the impact of changes in the Chinese exchange rate on Korean exports taking into consideration the characteristics of the exported products. In this paper, we consider the degree of vertical product differentiation to be one of the causes that ease the negative spillover...

Inclusivity is perhaps the single most important human need to facilitate and demonstrate fairness for all members in an open and free society. When this principle need is compromised by appearances of unscrupulous self-interested privileged elites to perpetuate a systemic widening disparity...