Countries worldwide have implemented lockdown measures to contain the covid-19 pandemic. After more than three months of restrictions to economic activities in many countries, the question has turned to the best ways to lift lockdowns while keeping the epidemic in check. Here I use basic...

I study how political competition affects the feasibility of free trade agreements (FTAs). I show that the possibility of political turnover creates strategic motivations for the formation of FTAs. Specifically, a government facing a high enough probability of losing power will have an incentive...

"This paper examines the effect of regionalism on unilateral trade liberalization using industry-level data on applied most-favored nation tariffs and bilateral preferences for ten Latin American countries from 1990 to 2001. The findings show that preferential tariff reduction in a given sector...

We study the impact of import protection on relationship-specific investments, organizational choice and welfare. We show that a tariff on intermediate inputs can improve social welfare through mitigating hold-up problems. It does so if it discriminates in favor of the investing party, thereby...

Using detailed data on trade and tariffs from 1992-2007, we examine how the ASEAN Free Trade Agreement has affected trade with non-members and external tariffs facing non-members. First, we examine the effect of preferential and external tariff reduction on import growth from ASEAN insiders and...