The business literature suggests that exporters either use trade intermediaries or own foreign sales representations. Standard trade models are silent about this choice. We develop a model where producers differ with respect to competitive advantage and where trade intermediaries arise...

Most FDI takes place between the developed countries, which suggests that the market-seeking motive is important for understanding FDI. However, given the stylized fact that trade barriers (e.g. transportation costs and financial barriers) have declined over the past 20 years, models that aim to...

As the process of globalisation of the world economy progresses, the degree of international competition among enterprises increases as well. Yet not all industries or branches are affected to the same extent by this development. One of the most important factors which determine the degree of...

Die Unternehmen stehen durch die fortschreitende Globalisierung der Weltwirtschaft in einem zunehmend internationalen Wettbewerb, wovon jedoch nicht alle Branchen im gleichen Ausmaß erfasst werden. Determiniert wird der Globalisierungsgrad einer Branche vor allem durch die Höhe der...

It has become common to measure the quality of exports using their unit export value (UEV). Applications of this method include studies of intra-industry trade (IIT) and analyses of industrial "competitiveness". This literature seems to assume that export quality and export price (the most...

By combining two large data sets (on international trade flows and on mergers and acquisitions – M&As), we are able to test two implications of Neary's (2003, 2004a) recent theoretical work. Analyzing M&As in a General Oligopolistic Equilibrium (GOLE) model incorporating strategic interaction...

Helpman, Melitz and Rubinstein (2008) derive gravity equations to estimate effects of trade barriers on the intensive and extensive margins of trade. They exploit the frequency of zeros in aggregate bilateral trade data to identify effects on the extensive margin and to obtain controls for firm...

By combining two large data sets (on international trade flows and cross-border mergers and acquisitions – M&As), we test two implications of Neary’s (2003, 2007) general oligopolistic equilibrium (GOLE) model (incorporating strategic interaction between firms in a general equilibrium...

This paper studies the concept of an international economic order, i.e. an institutional arrangement of international rules. Such rules emerge from negative experiences – historical disasters – that inflict severe hardship on people. A taxonomy for rules reducing transaction costs is...

This paper analyzes how international rules are established and stabilized, i.e. how an international institutional order develops. Rules emerge mainly through learning from negative experience and serve to reduce transaction costs. The paper looks at mechanisms that stabilize rule systems, at...