This paper develops a model of a small open economy that produces an export good with domestic labour and imported energy and is stuck in an unemployment situation resulting from an excessive fixed net-of-tax wage rate. We study a revenue-neutral green tax reform that substitutes energy for wage...

Are there systematic forces such that countries of different sizes participating in a free trade bloc gain differently from the entry of new members? If economies of scale imply that firms located in large countries enjoy lower costs, then the gains from enlarging the bloc will fall...

Empirical studies have found that enhanced foreign competition can encourage or discourage innovation. To address this relationship, I examine a market structure in which a small number of large multi-product oligopolists compete with a large number of small single-product firms in the same...

This paper studies how differences in labor market regulations shape countries' comparative advantage in the cross-border provision of labor-intensive services, using administrative data in Europe for the last two decades. I exploit exogenous variation in labor taxes and minimum wages faced by...

What are a country's policy options in the face of emerging technologies development in a global economy? To answer this question, we examine optimal dynamic policies in an open economy where technology is endogenously accumulated through R&D innovation. Our key insight is that a country has...

Until the beginning of this century, the GATT/WTO system worked. Economic research provided a compelling explanation. It showed that if governments maximize the well-being of their own countries broadly defined, GATT/WTO principles would facilitate mutually beneficial cooperation over their...

Proponents of trade liberalization argue that it will force firms to produce closer to the production possibility frontier and that the frontier will move out faster. In particular, plants that export will achieve a higher productivity level. However intuitive the argument, empirical evidence is...

Firm- and plant-level empirical studies typically find that trade liberalization squeezes price-cost margins among import-competing firms, that this heightened competitive pressure induces productivity gains among these same firms, and that further efficiency gains come from market share...

Using the menu-auction approach to endogenous determination of tariffs and allowing additionally for lobby formation itself to be endogenous, this paper analyzes the impact of unilateral trade liberalization by one country on its partner's trade policies. We find that such unilateral...