This paper shows how a world price shock can increase the likelihood that democratization must be used to resolve the threat of revolution. Initially, a ruling elite may be able to use trade policy to maintain political stability. But a world price shock can push the country into a situation...

We show that, in competition between a developed country and a developing country over environmental standards and taxes, the developing country may have a ‘second-mover advantage.’ In our model, firms do not unanimously prefer lower environmental-standard levels. We introduce this feature...

This paper proposes an answer to the question of why social unrest sometimes occurs in the wake of an IMF Structural Adjustment Program (SAP). Under certain circumstances, partly determined by a country’s comparative advantage, a nation’s elite may have an incentive to make transfers to the...

This paper shows how competition among governments for mobile firms can bring about excessive differentiation in levels of taxation and public good provision. Hotelling’s Principle of Minimum Differentiation is applied in the context of tax competition and shown to be invalid. Instead, when an...

This paper discusses a central element in globalization debate little addressed by economists, namely the interactions at global, national, and community levels between globalization and societally based values. Social values refer to wider notions of collective identity: religious values,...

We discuss global options for initiatives intended to ameliorate adverse impacts of visa and work permit systems used by national governments around the world. We first describe and document some of their effects, noting the relative lack of other research work on these issues. We then discuss...

In this paper we discuss the global negotiations now underway and aimed at achieving new climate change mitigation and other arrangements after 2012 (the end of the Kyoto commitment period). These were initiated in Bali in December 2007 and are scheduled to conclude by the end of 2009 in...

We discuss recent regional trade and economic partnership agreements involving the large population rapidly growing economies (Brazil, Russia, China, India, South Africa, ASEAN, Mexico) who (with the exception of Mexico) are also outside of the OECD. Perhaps 50 out of 300 that exist worldwide...

We explore the implications of trade liberalization in economies with State Owned enterprises (SOEs) and shirking. SOEs are modelled as controlled by the members of the enterprise who determine output and effort levels, while facing output prices and wage rates set by government. Enterprise...

We explore how outcomes of trade policy retaliation (Nash tariff games) are affected when trade simultaneously takes places geographically across countries and through time via financial intermediation. In such models deficits and surpluses in goods trade are endogenously determined, and...