We explore how the competitive pressure of imports affects productivity, at the firm level. There are two conflicting effects of import-competition: the pro-competitive effect fosters productivity, while the direct effect hinders it. The pro-competitive effect dominates in the steady-state,...

This paper studies the importance of incentives as a determinant of international trade flows. We argue that barter, countertrade and foreign direct investment can be seen as efficient institutions that mitigate contractual hazards which arise in technology trade, marketing and imperfect capital...

Several studies have analyzed the trade and output effects of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the United States and the European Union, but our paper is the first attempt to study its welfare effects. We measure the welfare effect of TTIP as the percentage of...

This paper revisits the personal expenditure tax (PET), the most prominent version of a progressive consumption tax. The PET has a long intellectual tradition in economics, and the merits and demerits of this alternative to the personal income tax have been discussed at length. What has been...

We analyze the positive and normative effects of a progressive tax on wages in a nonlinear New Keynesian DSGE model in the presence of demand and technology shocks. The non-linearity allows us to disentangle the effects of the progressive tax on the volatility and the level of macroeconomic...