This paper argues that interest on consumer debt must be taken into account when measuring poverty and inequality. These interest payments cannot be used to support household living standards. This makes middle- and low-income households worse off. Recent increases in consumer debt means that...

The goal of the present paper is to explore the optimal subsidy of R&D by both the foreign and home countries in a model based on Herguera and Lutz (The World Economy, 1998). While they assume the home country subsidy is designed to help the home country "leapfrog" the foreign, we assume...

This paper extends Gretz, Highfill, and Scott, "R&D Subsidies and Multinational Firm Ownership," Global Economy Journal (2007) to include the case of exporting to one or two markets. The primary results are that exporting is welfare enhancing for the home country (whether or not the firm is...

Despite the fact that compensation is the governing principle in contract law remedies, it has tenuous historical, economic and empirical support. A promisor's right to breach and pay damages (which is subject to the compensation principle) is only a subset of a larger family of termination...

Most industrialized countries subsidize private sector R&D, even under some circumstances when the firm is owned by foreigners. The present paper, using a simple theoretical analysis of a monopoly firm selling only to the U.S. market, argues that such subsidies are welfare enhancing--as long, of...

In a two-country world for a product which in the absence of trade is provided by a monopoly in each country, opening trade effectively creates a world duopoly rather than two separate country monopolies. Suppose the goods produced in the competing countries differ in quality because the firm's...

Consider an industry where a "home" and a "foreign" firm compete on the basis of both price and quality. Further, suppose cost considerations imply that potential market size is positively related to quality. This paper suggests that it is not necessarily the case that both the home and foreign...

Recent studies have compared labour gains from protection in import-competing industries with the costs of protection and found that those gains are not large enough to justify trade restraints. This study utilizes a new empirical technique for estimating the costs and benefits of protection in...