In this paper we consider a model of oligopolistic competition where firms make a two-dimensional product line decision. They choose a location in style space, thus inducing horizontal differentiation, and produce different qualities (a product line) of a given good (vertical differentiation),...

After the communist regimes collapsed throughout Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, they were replaced (at least initially) by relatively wide-ranging democracy. Measured by the indices of political freedom and civil liberties published by the Freedom House (see the Technical Annex for...

The gravity model of trade is utilized to assess the impact of disintegration on trade. The analysis is based on three recent disintegration episodes involving the firmer Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. The results point to a very strong home bias around the time of disintegration,...