The United States central government enactment of the 1866 Post Roads Act preempted state and municipal telegraph franchise entry barriers. Like present-day telecommunication companies, local franchise regulations were an entry barrier to United States telegraph companies. These pre-1866 state...

This paper studies the operation of trans-Atlantic passenger shipping cartels during the period 1899-1911 and its effects on passenger traffic. We systematically document and categorize cartel agreements on the basis of key aspects of internal organization. Then, we exploit the variation in...

This paper quantifies the extent to which the U.S. manufacturing labor market is characterized by employer market power and how such market power has changed over time. We find that the vast majority of U.S. manufacturing plants operate in a monopsonistic environment and, at least since the...

African countries have over the years experienced persistent current account deficits. The role of asymmetries in explaining the response of trade balance to exchange rate movement has not received adequate attention as linear models dominate extant empirical literature. In this paper, we...

This paper investigates the link between trade and environment by exploring the effects of green tariffs on the location of firms, innovation and the environment. It shows that tariffs levied on polluting goods could result in less global pollution than harmonization of environmental standards...

This paper shows how distance may be used to coordinate on a unique equilibrium in which trade agreements are regional. Trade agreement formation is modeled as coalition formation. In a standard trade model with no distance between countries, a familiar problem of coordination failure arises...

This paper analyzes welfare implications of protecting intellectual property rights (IPR) in the framework of TRIPS for developing countries (South) through its impact on innovation, market structure and technology transfer. In a North-South trade environment, the South sets its IPR policy...

Economists most often analyse the effects of protectionist or antidumping policies in the context of tariffs or voluntary export restraints - the latter are very similar to quotas in fact. Antidumping policies in the European Union however make frequent use of price undertakings. Whereas the...

In today's increasingly competitive business environment, many firms in declining industries have been confronted with the need to restructure. However, lobbies in these industries have often managed to attract government subsidies instead. The current paper looks at the decision of loss-making...

In this paper we analyse the effects of soft budget constraints in an international context. Firstly, we show that soft budget constraints in an exporting country lead to higher levels of trade protection in the recipient country. Secondly, the model predicts that protectionist trade policy...