What kinds of changes in foreign competition lead domestic industries to seek import protection? To address this question this paper uses detailed monthly U.S. import data to investigate changes in import composition during a 24-month window immediately preceding the filing of a petition for...

The dynamism of air traffic markets in the Middle East obscures the persistence of restrictions on international competition. But how important are such restrictions for passenger traffic? This paper uses detailed data on worldwide passenger aviation to estimate the effect of air transport...

We propose two distinct approaches to the measurement of industry upstreamness (or average distance from final use) and show that they yield an equivalent measure. Furthermore, we provide two additional interpretations of this measure, one of them related to the concept of forward linkages in...

Total U.S. trade with NAFTA partners has increased 78 percent in real terms since 1993-U.S. Mexico trade alone is up 141 percent-compared to a 43 percent increase in U.S. trade with the rest of the world. In this article we compare the nature of U.S. trade growth with Canada and Mexico to growth...

A key element missing from the structural gravity literature is an examination of the implied general equilibrium. By design the gravity equation is adept at predicting bilateral trade flows. To make inferences beyond trade flows, however, the theoretic models should be consistent with other...

In recent years there has been considerable growth in ‘Fair Trade’ markets for several commodities, but most notably for coffee. We argue that coffee is grown under conditions that might well subject growers to the market power of intermediaries. Using an approach designed to evaluate the...

Formal dimension-reduction techniques are frequently used to interpret data on legislative voting behavior. This study applies one such technique to countylevel election returns on 11 ballot measures in South Dakota’s 2006 general election. The measures on the 2006 ballot proposed substantial...

A large literature has shown that geographic frictions reduce trade, but has not clarified precisely why. In this paper, we provide some insight into why such frictions matter by examining what parts of trade these frictions reduce most. Using data that track manufacturers' shipments within the...