I investigate the welfare effects of trade liberalization by exploiting a natural policy experiment in the economy of Cyprus. A 1993 law relaxed import restrictions on used vehicles and enabled the importation of second-hand Japanese automobiles into the country. This led to a dramatic shift of...

Intermediaries often arise in order to facilitate trade in markets characterized by asymmetric information. In the travel industry, policymakers have tried to address information asymmetries by providing hotel ratings. We show that those ratings are noisy indicators of quality because of the use...

Is there any empirical evidence that firms become more efficient after becoming exporters? Do firms that become exporters generate positive spillovers for domestically-oriented producers in their industry or region? In this paper we analyze the causal links between exporting and productivity...

There is no widely accepted definition of price discrimination with differentiated products. Either absolute price-cost differences or percentage price-cost markups are used as benchmarks for comparison. I show that the two criteria are qualitatively different: one may indicate price...

I investigate the welfare effects of trade liberalization by exploiting a natural policy experiment in the economy of Cyprus. A 1993 law relaxed import restrictions on used vehicles and enabled the importation of second-hand Japanese automobiles into the country. This led to a dramatic shift of...

We construct a theoretical framework to study the impact of quality standards for used durable goods on trade flows, profits and consumer welfare. We show that asymmetric quality standards generate trade in used goods from high to low standard countries while at the same time reducing trade in...