Economists tend to exalt the virtues of free international trade, while politicians are more skeptical. This paper suggests that this is the case because politicians mainly worry about the income distribution effects of trade liberalization, while economists focus on efficiency. Using textbook...

Economists tend to exalt the virtues of free international trade, while politicians are more skeptical. This paper suggests that this is the case because politicians mainly worry about the income distribution effects of trade liberalization, while economists focus on efficiency. Using textbook...

Factor endowments are usually taken as given in trade theoretical analyses of technological change. We use the Deardorff (1974) diagram to show how the steady state capital labor ratio endogenously adjusts to technology shocks in a two-sector small open economy, an effect which has largely been...

Economists emphasize the welfare gains of unrestricted trade, but politicians worry about the income distribution effects of increased competition. We show that the welfare gains of a trade shock become ambiguous if inaccurate information hinders optimal income redistribution with distortionary...

We show that the specification of technology differences in recent empirical studies of trade is not supported by basic growth theory and may lead to biased estimates of the pattern of specialization and trade.

Die entwicklungspolitische Debatte hat lange darunter gelitten, daß ihr eine überzeugende theoretische Grundlage fehlte. Dies beginnt sich seit einigen Jahren mit dem Aufkommen der "neuen" Wachstumstheorie zu ändern. Deren Implikationen stützen das, was neoklassisch orientierte...

Most empirical studies of long run growth refer to one of the two seminal contributions by Robert Solow (1956, 1957). His work shows that in order to estimate the relative roles of factor accumulation and technology in development, an a priori identification assumption is needed about the nature...