This paper investigates Samuelson's (JEP, 2004) argument that technical progress of the trade partner may hurt the home country. We illustrate this prospect in a simple Ricardian model for sitations with outward knowledge spillovers. Within this framework Samuelson's "Act II" effects may occur....

Recently the software industry has experienced fundamental changes in market structure through the entry of open source competitors, e.g. Linux's entry into the operating systems market. In a simple model we examine the effects of such a change in market structure from monopoly to duopoly under...

Open source software (OSS) is a public good. A self-interested individual would consider providing such software, if the benefits he gained from having it justified the cost of programming. Nevertheless each agent is tempted to free ride and wait for others to develop the software instead. This...

This papers sheds light on the puzzling evidence that even though open source software (OSS) is a public good, it is developed for free by highly qualified, young and motivated individuals, and evolves at a rapid pace. We show that once OSS development is understood as the private provision of a...

Environmental policies frequently target the ratio of dirty to green output within the same industry. To achieve such targets, the green sector may be subsidized or the dirty sector be taxed. We show that in a monopolistic competition setting, the two policy approaches have different welfare...

In general, the raw product gas of biomass gasification contains a range of minor species and contaminants, including particles, tar, alkali metals, chlorine, nitrogen compounds and sulphur compounds. This study reviews the recent developments in product gas cleaning technologies for these...

Actual trade and tariff policy prefers ad valorem tariffs to specific tariffs. Yet in this paper we show that, in a setting of monopolistic competition, realizing a given restriction on imports via a specific tariff would generate more consumer utility than obtaining the same restriction via an...