This paper is a necessary companion to the one entitled The West European Woollen Industries and their Struggles for International Markets, c.1000 - 1500. No one can properly comprehend that five-century history of international competition for textile markets, without some basic understanding...

This paper analyses the major changes in textile products, production costs, prices, and market orientations during the era when the �draperies� or cloth industries of the late-medieval Low Countries and England had become increasingly dependent upon northern markets and the German...

This paper challenges the conventional wisdom in European economic history that long-distance maritime transport was always more cost-effective than overland trade routes. Thus the majority of historians in the past century have attributed the rapid decline of the medieval Champagne Fairs,...

We study how competitive pressure influences the make-or-buy decision that oligopolistic firms face between producing an intermediate component in-house or purchasing it from a domestic supplier. We model outsourcing as a bilateral relationship in which the supplier undertakes relationship...

This paper explores the impact of the Count of Flanders' monetary and wage policies upon the fortunes of the Flemish woollen cloth industry in a crucial but penultimate phase of its irredeemable decline, from 1390 to 1435, when it was beginning to yield to the growing supremacy of the now...

The recent empirical literature on firms’ performance has focused on the multidimensional concept of firms’ managerial strategies. In this paper, we analyze the relationship between firms’ managerial strategies and firms’ performance, accounting for entrepreneur’s specific...

This paper examines how exposure to FDI affects Canadian indigenous plants‘ survival, through their economic linkages with FDI affiliates as competitors, input suppliers and customers. One unique feature of the paper is that it studies a country with extensive exposure to FDI, and relies on a...

Competition is increasingly crossing borders. However, location still matters: the most successful competitors in an industry often cluster in the same geographic areas and companies use the advantages of location to compete at a global level. When competing across borders, firms can coordinate...

The incomplete nature of contracts governing international transactions limits the extent to which the production process can be fragmented across borders. In a dynamic, general-equilibrium Ricardian model of North-South trade, the incompleteness of international contracts is shown to lead to...

All countries are eager to attract as much foreign investments as possible. At the same time FDI may have not only positive, but also negative economic effects for receiving countries. Positive effects are associated with technology transfer, efficient allocation of resources, and training of...