This paper discusses the place of oligopoly in international trade theory, and argues that it is unsatisfactory to ignore firms altogether, as in perfectly competitive models, or to view large firms as more productive clones of small ones, as in monopolistically competitive models. Doing either...

We develop a new model of multi-product firms which invest to improve both the quality of their individual products and of their brand. Because of flexible manufacturing, products closer to firms' core competence have lower costs, so they produce more of them, and also have higher incentives to...

This paper reviews the scientific contributions of Paul Krugman to the study of international trade, on the occasion of his receipt of the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. A simplified exposition is presented of some of his principal findings, including: the effects of trade on firm scale...

This paper develops and characterizes an index of trade policy restrictiveness defined as the uniform tariff equivalent which maintains the same volume of trade as a given set of tariffs, quotas, and domestic taxes and subsidies. We relate this volume-equivalent index to the Trade...

I introduce a utility-consistent benchmark for international comparisons of real income, the GAIA (‘Geary-Allen International Accounts’) System. It coincides with the Geary method (which underlies the Penn World Table) when preferences are Leontief and with the EKS method (favoured by OECD)...

We present a new model of multi-product firms (MPFs) and flexible manufacturing and explore its implications in partial and general equilibrium. International trade integration affects the scale and scope of MPFs through a competition effect and a demand effect. We demonstrate how MPFs adjust in...

A two-country model of oligopoly in general equilibrium is used to show how changes in market structure accompany the process of trade and capital market liberalisation. The model predicts that bilateral mergers in which low-cost firms buy out higher-cost foreign rivals are profitable under...

The paper describes the insights which trade theory can provide into economic developments in Ireland during the 1930s. First, a version of Ronald Jones's "specific factors" model is applied to the period after 1932, when a policy which combined industrial tariff protection and controls on...

This paper examines optimal policy towards a home exporting firm which competes on price with a foreign firm. Two policy instruments are compared: an output subsidy and a price subsidy. The paper also considers two games: the conventional ex ante game, in which the government sets the value of...

This paper studies the welfare losses from tariff protection in a general model of a small open economy where some factors are internationally mobile. It is shown that, as long as the economy remains incompletely specialised international factor mobility must raise the cost of protection. This...