Since the seminal work of Krugman (1979), product variety has played a central role in models of trade and growth. In spite of the general use of love-of-variety models, there has been no systematic study of how the import of new varieties has contributed to national welfare gains in the United...

This note develops a model of inter-personal trade which combines comparative advantage and external scale economies. It is shown that the gains from external scale economies outweigh those from comparative advantage as the population size increases.

Like trade between countries, trade within countries is costly; unlike between countries, gains from trade within countries depend on migration and taxes, as gains through higher wages have tax consequences that gains through lower prices do not. We confirm the first point and flexibly measure...

Does trade within a country affect welfare and productivity? What are the magnitude and consequences of costs to such trade? To answer these questions, we exploit unique Canadian data to measure internal trade costs in a variety of ways – they are large, and vary across sectors and...

A two-period duopoly model of trade with habit formation displays a “pre-entry pro-competitive effect” and the standard pro-competitive effect once trade is effective. Both effects are driven in a different way by transport cost. A trade liberalization affects ambiguously welfare.

We build up a Ricardian trade model for a small open economy with imperfection in the market for credit which eventually affects the pattern of production and trade. Workers/entrepreneurs are endowed with different levels “capital” and need to borrow to produce the credit intensive good....

Recent theories of the multinational corporation introduce the property rights model of the firm and examine whether to integrate our outsource firm activities locally or to a foreign country. This paper focus instead on the internal organization of the multinational corporation by examining the...

Recent theories of the multinational corporation introduce the property rights model of the firm and examine whether to integrate our outsource firm activities locally or to a foreign country. This paper focus instead on the internal organization of the multinational corporation by examining the...

Recent theories of the multinational corporation introduce the property rights model of the firm and examine whether to integrate our outsource firm activities locally or to a foreign country. This paper focus instead on the internal organization of the multinational corporation by examining the...

The great recession of 2008-2009 resulted in a large fall in trade relative to output. Real trade fell roughly three times more than real GDP in the U.S. and Mexico, and by a factor of five in Canada. The decline in trade and output was particularly large in sectors with high levels of...