In this paper we analyse the effects of soft budget constraints in an international context. Firstly, we show that soft budget constraints in an exporting country lead to higher levels of trade protection in the recipient country. Secondly, the model predicts that protectionist trade policy...

This paper presents a political economy model of public standards in an open economy model. We use the model to derive the political optimum and to analyze different factors that have an influence on this political equilibrium. The paper discusses how the level of development influences the...

We analyze the effects of high standards food chains on household welfare taking into account general equilibrium effects and market imperfections. To measure structural production changes and welfare effects on rural and urban households, our model has two types of agents, five kinds of...

This paper develops a model that offers a plausible interpretation for the empirical observation of diffusion of antidumping (AD) laws amongst WTO members. Contrary to the regnant belief that this proliferation is driven mainly by retaliatory motives, our model shows that adoption and use of AD...

We suggest a new way to quantify the growth effects of capital mobility. We find that for reasonable parameter values, capital mobility has a large impact on income growth.

The role of human capital has so far not been well documented at the macroeconomic level. Many empirical studies lack a consistent theoretical foundation and there are measurement problems due to a very narrow concept of human capital focusing on formal education. Future empirical research...