In an incomplete contracts model where there are otherwise no social motives for protection, we show that protection is socially beneficial when a buyer outsources customized inputs from a specialized domestic supplier while also purchasing generic inputs from the world market. The reason is...

We analyse trade reform among the ASEAN countries, which recently began removing all mutual trade barriers. The standard method to avoid complete specialization in traded goods is to distinguish goods both by physical type and place of origin (the so called Armington assumption). This...

This paper examines the effect of private label sold by one of two retailers (the “chain store”) on wholesale prices in the intermediate goods market. Under sym- metric retail costs, the chain store can make the wholesale price lower than its rival (the “local store”) when the private...