This paper develops an oligopolistic model of international trade with heterogeneous firms and endogenous R&D to examine how trade liberalization affects firm and industry productivity, as well as social welfare. We identify four effects of trade liberalization on productivity: (i) a direct...

Students' non-return is a specific type of brain drain. This paper is an empirical study of the determinants of students' return intention in New Zealand. Applying a binary logit model on a comprehensive set of survey data, this study finds that initial intention prior to leaving for abroad is...

This paper examines international business cycle transmission within a two-country dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model featuring an endogenously determined trade pattern. In contrast to existing literature, this model distinguishes between non-traded final goods and traded inputs. The...

In the extensive empirical literature on aid effectiveness, aid is always measured as a share of GDP. However, measuring aid in real dollars per capita is also consistent with standard growth theory. We show that the choice of denominator makes an enormous difference to the sign and significance...

This paper analyzes the choice of commodity tax base when countries set their taxes non-cooperatively in a two-country symmetric reciprocal dumping model of intra-industry trade with free entry and trade costs. We show that the consumption base (destination principle) dominates the production...

Broadly speaking, economic experiments and surveys have found trust to be much lower in Africa than in industrialized countries. We analyze new experimental and survey results from rural Cameroon, where the average level of trust appears to be much higher than is typical of Africa. A substantial...

This paper re-examines the calculation of the relative standard deviation (RSD) measure of competitive balance in leagues in which draws are possible outcomes. Some key conclusions emerging from the exchange between Cain and Haddock (2006) and Fort (2007) are reversed. There is no difference,...

Bonus point systems are a popular tournament design feature in some sports. We consider a bonus point system for the Australian Football League (AFL). In this paper, we utilise league points as a measure of team strength in a prediction model and choose the allocation of points to maximise...

This paper re-kindles the debate on the feasibility of a Pacific Islands currency union in view of the recent expansion and consolidation of regional strategies and agreements such as the ÔPacific PlanÕ and the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations Plus. These initiatives, including...

In this paper we use experimental data collected in rural Cameroon to quantify the effect of social distance on trust and altruism. Our measure of social distance is one that is relevant to everyday economic interactions: subjects in a Trust Game play with fellow villagers or with someone from a...