This paper examines the free-market and socially optimal outcomes in a dynamic oligopoly model with R&D spillovers. First-best optimal subsidies to R&D are higher when firms play strategically against each other but lower when they cooperate on R&D (at least with high spillovers) and when they...

This paper develops and characterises 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...

This paper examines the implications for strategic trade policy of different assumptions about precommitment. In a dynamic oligopoly game with learning by doing, the optimal first-period subsidy is lower if firms cannot precommit to future output than if they can; and is lower still if the...

This paper compares adversarial with cooperative industrial and trade policies in a dynamic oligopoly game in which a home and foreign firm compete in R&D and output and, because of spillovers, each firm benefits from the other's R&D. When the government can commit to an export subsidy, such a...

I consider the implications of recent research for R&D policy in developing countries. Typical new growth models, which assume free entry and no strategic behaviour by R&D producers, are less appropriate for policy guidance than strategic oligopoly models. But the latter have ambiguous...

Alternative methods of measuring the restrictiveness of trade policy are reviewed. A new measure is proposed and it is shown to be theoretically superior to other measures and to be easily implementable in practice. Measuring trade restrictiveness is an important aspect of evaluating the stance...

This paper introduces a new measure, the Trade Restrictiveness Index, which measures the restrictiveness of a system of trade protection. The index is a general equilibrium application of the distance function and answers the question: "What uniform set of trade restrictions is equivalent (in...

In this paper we consider the case for subsidies towards firms which generate R&D spillovers in open economies. We show that many expected results are overturned in the presence of strategic behaviour by firms. Local R&D spillovers to other domestic firms may justify an R&D tax rather than a...

This paper explores the links between international trade theory and the practice of trade and industrial policy in open economies, with special attention to three areas where theoretical lessons have been misunderstood in policy debates. I argue that the 'concertina rule' for tariff reform...

I consider the problem of choosing index numbers of purchasing power and real income for international comparisons. I show that the desirable properties of methods based on the Fisher "Ideal" index do not extend to multilateral comparisons, except when tastes are homothetic. By contrast, the...