South Korea has had a continuous engagement with significant trade, investment and security matters simultaneously in its relations with other nations. South Korea’s bilateralism with China is a part of a larger milieu which China has been constructing, that includes the Belt and Road...

There have been significant improvements in traditional trade policies in the past few decades. However, these improvements can only be fully effective when they are complemented with a favorable investment climate. This study focuses on a particular aspect of investment climate, namely labor...

In light of the developments in global offshoring and Bangladesh’s rise in IT/ITeS services the study explores the IT/ITeS sector in Bangladesh. The study included benchmarking the Bangladeshi IT/ITeS industry with the other leading offshore services destinations to ascertain the opportunity...

The recent election results in US, Germany, Japan and China and vote for BRIXIT in Britian suggest that political outcomes increasingly relate to the economic, political and social orientation in both developed and developing countries. Countries that have not promoted social and economic...

Early references to intra-industry trade were mostly ignored for many years. It was only in the past two decades that intra-industry trade has received significant attention and has become a leading area for international economists. It has become increasingly common in recent decades due to the...

Empirical evidence suggests that sectoral export growth decreases exporters' survival probability, whereas this is not true for non-exporters. Models with firm heterogeneity in total factor productivity (TFP) predict the opposite. To solve this puzzle, we develop a two{factor framework where...

This paper assesses the existence and extent of transition cost for the OECD economies associated with the increasing Chinese competition in the export markets. We find that intensified Chinese competition is an important factor in explaining structural changes not only within the manufacturing...

What is the impact of import competition from low-wage countries (LWCs) on inflationary pressure in Europe? This paper examines whether labor-intensive exports from emerging Europe, Asia, and other global regions have a uniform impact on producer prices in Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, and the...

Import competition from China is pervasive in the sense that for many good categories, the competitive environment that US firms face in these markets is strongly driven by the prices of Chinese imports, and so is their pricing decision. This paper quantifies the effect of the...

This volume was prepared by Sebastian Benz while he was working at the Ifo Institute. It was completed in December 2013 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich. It includes five self-contained chapters. All chapters discuss different...