In this paper we consider the case for subsidies towards firms which generate R&D spillovers in open economies. We show that many expected results are overturned in the presence of strategic behaviour by firms. Local R&D spillovers to other domestic firms may justify an R&D tax rather than a...

In this paper characterise optimal trade and industrial policy in dynamic oligopolistic markets. If governments can commit to future policies, optimal first-period intervention should diverge from the profit-shifting benchmark to an extent which exactly offsets the strategic behaviour implied by...

This paper develops and characterises an index of trade policy restrictiveness defined as the uniform tariff equivalent which maintains the same volume of trade as a given set of tariffs, quotas, and domestic taxes and subsidies. We relate this volume-equivalent index to the Trade...

This paper compares adversarial with cooperative industrial and trade policies in a dynamic oligopoly game in which a home and foreign firm compete in R&D and output and, because of spillovers, each firm benefits from the other's R&D. When the government can commit to an export subsidy, such a...

I consider the implications of recent research for R&D policy in developing countries. Typical new growth models, which assume free entry and no strategic behaviour by R&D producers, are less appropriate for policy guidance than strategic oligopoly models. But the latter have ambiguous...

This paper explores the links between international trade theory and the practice of trade and industrial policy in open economies, with special attention to three areas where theoretical lessons have been misunderstood in policy debates. I argue that the 'concertina rule' for tariff reform...

I consider the problem of choosing index numbers of purchasing power and real income for international comparisons. I show that the desirable properties of methods based on the Fisher "Ideal" index do not extend to multilateral comparisons, except when tastes are homothetic. By contrast, the...

This paper tracks the rise in the percentage of employees who have never become union members (¿nevermembers¿) since the early 1980s and shows that it is the reduced likelihood of ever becoming a member rather than the haemorrhaging of existing members which is behind the decline in overall...

This paper examines the ongoing changes in strategy, structure, and performance of the largest 250 non-financial firms in both Britain and Germany. To this end, publicly available firm-level data is presented at first and supplemented by the results of a questionnaire survey that was sent to the...

Firms' decisions about which goods to produce are often made at a more disaggregate level than the data observed by empirical researchers. When products differ according to production technique or the way in which they enter demand, this data aggregation problem introduces a bias into standard...