We formulate a two-country model with monopolistic competition and heterogeneous firms to reconsider labor market linkages in open economies. Labor-market imperfections arise by virtue of country-specific real minimum wages. Two principal experiments are considered. First, we show that trade...

Trade theory consists of a portfolio of models. What elements might be useful in modeling the offshoring of white-collar services, or do these issues call for an entirely fresh approach? I try to identifying some of the important aspects of this phenomenon and then argue that modeling could...

We illuminate the relationship between optimal firm pricing and optimal trade policy by exploring a generalized model that accommodates product differentiation at both the national and sub-national (firm) levels. We assume monopolistic competition in the differentiated products at the...

The literature on multinationals and developing countries has examined the causality" running from direct investment to changes in country characteristics (wages skills, etc.) and also the opposite direction of causality, from existing country characteristics to" inward direct investment. This...

Producer services such as managerial and engineering consulting can provide domestic firms with the substantial benefits of specialized knowledge that would be costly in terms of both time and money for domestic firms to develop on their own. These intermediate services are often non-traded, or...

Conventional analysis in the trade-industrial-organization literature suggests that, when a country has some market power over an imported good, some small level of protection must be welfare improving. This is essentially a terms-of-trade argument that is reinforced if the imported goods are...

There has been much discussion about what issues should be included in international 'trade' negotiations. Different countries, firms and activists groups have quite different views regarding which items should (or should not) be negotiated together. Proposals run the gamut from no linking to...

We consider the multinational firm's decision on whether to enter a new market immediately via direct investment or to contract initially with a local agent and (possibly) invest later. Use of a local agent allows the multinational to avoid costly mistakes by finding out if the market is large...

We consider a trade model combining a 2x2x2 Heckscher-Ohlin structure, monopolistic competition, transport costs, and multinational corporations. We demonstrate how the mix of national and multinational firms that operate in equilibrium depends on technology and on the division of the world...

Despite several theoretical contributions and considerable informal empirical evidence" to the contrary, a notion that trade and investment are substitutes persists in trade policy" analysis. This paper considers the liberalization of commodity trade versus liberalization" allowing direct...