There is increasing empirical evidence that vertical product differentiation is an important determinant of international trade. However, the economic literature so far has solely focused on the case in which quality trade stems from differences between countries. No studies investigate the role...

The authors show in this paper that increasing the transparency of the trading environment can be an important complement to traditional liberalization of tariff and non-tariff barriers. Our definition of transparency is grounded in a transaction cost analysis. The authors focus on two...

This Paper provides a new approach to the evaluation of pre-shipment inspection (PSI) programs as ways of improving tariff-revenue collection and reducing fraud when customs administrations are corrupt. We build a model highlighting the contribution of surveillance firms to the generation of...

All preferential trading agreements (PTAs) short of a customs union use Rules of Origin (RoO) to prevent trade deflection. RoO raise production costs and create administrative costs. This Paper argues that in the case of the recent wave of North-South PTAs, the presence of RoO virtually limits...

During the recent financial crisis many countries resorted to protectionist measures to try to boost demand for domestically-produced goods. In this paper we explore the extent to which the adoption of protectionist measures led to retaliation by other countries undermining the increase in...

We explore the extent to which the adoption of protectionist measures during the recent financial crisis led to retaliation by trading partners. We find no evidence of retaliation. On the contrary, there is strong evidence of chicken-games being played.