The market access and welfare effects of Free Trade Areas (FTAs) without Rules of Origin (ROOs) are studied. We consider both the final and intermediate goods markets and their interlinkage. The FTA weakly reduces all tariffs and prices within the FTA. This raises quantity demanded and reduces...

In contrast to existing work which takes an ex-ante approach and looks for policy prescriptions which yield welfare improvements, we take an ex-post approach. We ask whether there are indicators which show whether welfare has risen or not in the wake of a reform. That is, we look for evidence of...

We develop a model to study the behavior of firms in a Free Trade Area with Rules of Origin and the consequences of this behavior on the market equilibrium and outcome. We show that firms will choose to specialize, and that an FTA with strict ROOs on the intermediate good raises imports and...

In a situation where tariff reforms are being negotiated between two parties, one of which aims to raise its exports and the other aims to raise its welfare, tariff cuts must be in the interest of at least one party. It is possible for the interests of the two sides to conflict. Conflict is...

In contrast to existing work which takes an ex-ante approach and looks for policy prescriptions which yield welfare improvements, we take an ex-post approach. We ask whether there are indicators which show whether welfare has risen or not in the wake of a reform. That is, we look for evidence of...

While it is tempting to think of Free Trade Areas (FTAs) as liberalizing, they need not be. One reason for this is a relatively less studied feature of FTAs, namely Rules of Origin (ROOs) which determine when products are eligible for preferential treatment. We develop a model to study the...

Direct regulations have two regimes. In one, all firms behave in the same manner and in the other they behave differently. Past work assumed all firms were identical, thereby neglecting the non-monotonicity in comparative statics arising from the regime change

We study a Free Trade Area with Rules of Origin and show that there are two distinct regimes. Comparative statics results for the two regimes are exact opposites and a regime switch occurs when ROO become restrictive enough. Consequently, imports into the FTA of the intermediate good first fall...

This paper develops a theory of international trade in which financial development and factor endowments jointly determine comparative advantage. We apply the financial contract model of Holmstrom and Tirole (1998) to the Heckscher-Ohlin-Samuelson (HOS) model in which firms'' dependence on...

This paper considers the effects of trade policy-tariffs and quotas-when importing is done by competitive traders who are identical ex ante but differ ex post. We show that the standard equivalence results no longer hold and the conventional ranking of tariffs and quotas is turned on its head:...