This paper empirically studies why price distortions are more prevalent in some countries than in others. The authors find no significant difference between democracies and dictatorships but frequent regime changes reduce distortions. Political systems (factional-subordinate) that encourage...

This paper shows that it is impossible to rule out factor-intensity reversals (FIRs) under monopolistic competition unless production functions are homothetic. We construct a simple example where the capital-intensity at unchanged output is fixed, but where FIRs still can occur because...

A large share of world trade, especially among the OECD countries, is two-way trade within industries, so called intra-industry trade. Despite this, few attempts have been made to examine why countries export some products within industries, whereas they import others. We examine this issue, by...