The core idea behind the paper is that trade policy matters for the organization of global value chains, a notion largely neglected by economists but which has important implications for our understanding of trade and the international transmission of trade policy shocks. We develop a...

This paper examines the role of contracting institutions on a multinational firm's optimal ownership strategy. We develop a model in which both a multinational firm and its local joint venture partner can ex post engage in costly rent-seeking actions to increase their ex ante agreed upon revenue...

Recent decades have seen the emergence of global value chain (GVC) production arrangements in which firms fine-slice production processes and disperse activities over multiple countries. This paper analyses how the rise of GVCs affects trade politics in developed countries. Our theoretical model...

The acronym and neologism “VUCA” is employed by management and some scholars to denote the unpredictability of the modern world and its impact on business. The VUCA approach suggests that a rational firm’s response should be to: protect against volatility by engineering-in redundancy and...