In an economy with imperfect labor contracts, differences in the distribution of talent can be an independent source of comparative advantage. I study a world economy with two activities, one in which an individual's contribution to production can be measured accurately and another in which...

In an economy with imperfect labor contracts, differences in the distribution of talent can be an independent source of comparative advantage. I study a world economy with two activities, one in which an individual's contribution to production can be measured accurately and another in which...

Samuelson (1947) stated that a regular equilibrium exhibits the transfer paradox if and only if it is unstable. Gale (1974) and many in the early 1980's debunked this equivalence by adding extra countries, reaching an anti consensus.We reinterpret Samuelson's result as identifying the threshold,...

This paper uproots David Ricardo's trade theory. When his production possibility curve is concave, there is comparative disadvantage, which should mean loss from trade and hence no trade. Since concave curve is common and realistic, his trade theory is obliterated

We consider trade liberalization in a multilateral trade model, where countries have identical homothetic tastes but may have different constant returns to scale technologies that produce at least two goods from at least two factors. In this model, we derive the world prices after trade...

Does offshore sourcing by domestic producers destroy jobs? Does it lower wages? To a growing number of observers the answer to both questions appears to be affirmative. This paper examines the issue in the context of a conventional trade framework that has been amended to allow production to be...

Given a world consisting of two countries, two commodities, and two consumers, this paper analyzes the potential effects of the current global trend of shifting world productions with regards to consumer goods. When technological improvements occur in a developing country, would terms of trade...

Dieser Beitrag soll einen Überblick und eine Systematik im Hinblick auf die aktuellen Beiträge zum Phänomen der Fragmentierung geben. Während man im Zusammenhang mit der Ausweitung des Nord-Süd-Handels von einer horizontalen Globalisierung spricht, gilt Fragmentierung als Ausdruck einer...

We consider the optimal education policies of a small economy whose government has a limited budget. Initially, the economy is closed and the government chooses its education policy to maximize welfare under autarky. Then the economy trades with the rest of the world. Lastly, the government...

In a Ricardian model with general distributions of industry efficiencies, the welfare gains from trade can be decomposed into a selection and a reallocation effect. The former is the change in average efficiency due to the selection of industries that survive international competition. The...