This paper shows how a world price shock can increase the likelihood that democratization must be used to resolve the threat of revolution. Initially, a ruling elite may be able to use trade policy to maintain political stability. But a world price shock can push the country into a situation...

This paper develops a model of a trade agreement that puts at centre stage the competing interests between ?rms within a sector: Larger ?rms tend to be pro-trade liberalization whereas smaller ?rms favor protection. This set-up contrasts with the prior literature in economics that has tended to...

This paper shows how distance may be used to coordinate on a unique equilibrium in which trade agreements are regional. Trade agreement formation is modeled as coalition formation. In a standard trade model with no distance between countries, a familiar problem of coordination failure arises...

In a classic model of tax competition, this paper shows that the level of public good provision and taxation in a decentralized equilibrium can be efficient or inefficient with either too much or too little public good provision. The key is whether there exists a unilateral incentive to deviate...

This paper shows that the WTO's Article XXIV increases the likelihood of free trade, but may worsen world welfare when free trade is not reached and customs unions (CUs) form. We consider a model of many countries. Article XXIV prevents a CU from raising its common external tariff, which makes...