Introducing a finite reservation price in Hotelling’s spatial duopoly with linear transportation costs shows that (i) there dose not exist a pure strategy symmetric location equilibrium of the reservation price is 'high’, (ii) there exists a unique pure strategy symmetric location...

We propose a quantification of the p-p plot that assigns equal weight to all distances between the respective distributions: the surface between the p-p plot and the diagonal. This surface is labeled the Harmonic Weighted Mass (HWM) index. We introduce the diagonal-deviation (d-d) plot that...

The theoretically necessary and sufficient condition for the correspondence between 'revealed' comparative advantage and pre-trade relative prices derived by Hillman (1980) is analysed empirically for virtually all countries of the world over an extended period of time. This yields 10 stylized...

Using a comprehensive international trade data set we investigate empirical regularities (known as Zipf’s Law or the rank-size rule) for the distribution of the interaction between countries as measured by revealed comparative advantage. Using the recently developed estimator by Gabaix and...

The information contained in PP-plots is transformed into a single number. The resulting Harmonic Mass (HM) index is distribution free and its sample counterpart is shown to be consistent. For a wide class of CDFs the exact analytical expression of the distribution of the sample HM index is...

We analyze the dynamics of Chinese comparative advantage as measured by export shares and the Balassa index using 3-digit and 4-digit sectors for the period 1970 – 1997. We use novel tools to identify periods of rapid structural change and the persistence of comparative advantage, such as...

We analyze the empirical violation of the Hillman condition, a necessary and sufficient condition for the correspondence between comparative advantage and pre-trade relative prices. Our comprehensive data set allows us to investigate the Hillman condition for virtually all countries of the...

This four-chapter overview of basic exchange rate theories discusses (i) the elasticity and absorption approach, (ii) the (long-run) implications of the monetary approach, (iii) the short-run effects of monetary and fiscal policy under various economic conditions, and (iv) the transition from...

Geographical economics analyzes the endogenous determination of the location of economic activity in a general equilibrium framework. We investigate the impact of pollution by focusing on the interaction between location advantages and negative pollution externalities associated with local...

We derive and discuss a general, but simple geographical economics model with congestion, allowing us to explain the economic viability of small and large locations. The model generalizes some previous work and lends itself to analyzing the impact of public policy in terms of infrastructure...