When the world economy was recently hit by a severe recession, governments all over the world reacted by initiating stimulus packages. Some countries (among them, most notably, China and the US) tried to put special emphasis on their home industries by including `Buy National' clauses into the...

world, where the two countries (`Europe' and `America') differ in their preferences towards wage inequality. Fair wage considerations compress wage differentials in both countries. European workers are more averse to wage inequality, and Europe is characterized by lower wage differentials and...

This paper analyzes whether complexity, measured by the number of skilled tasks that are performed in production, explains countries commodity trade structure. We modify the Romalis (<link/>) model to incorporate advantage differences in complexity across commodities together with differences in the...

We incorporate demand-side considerations in trade in a systematic but straightforward way. We do so by focusing on the role of inequality in the determination of trade flows and patterns. With non-homothetic preferences, when countries are similar in all respects but asset inequality, we find...

A modern adaptation of the Ricardian model is used, which incorporates monopolistic competition and multiple factors to derive a MacDougall-type relation between a country's international competitiveness at the industry level and its productivity performance. This relation is implemented...

This paper presents a simple model that examines the impact of offshoring and immigration on wages and tests these predictions using U.S. state-industry-year panel data. According to the model, the productivity effect causes offshoring to have a more positive impact on low-skilled wages than...

We develop a multi-country model with imperfect labour markets to study the effect of labour market frictions on bilateral trade flows. We use a framework that allows for goods trade and capital mobility and show that labour market imperfections exert opposite effects in the absence of capital...

We study how unionization affects competitive selection between heterogeneous firms when wage negotiations can occur at the firm or at the profit-centre level. With productivity specific wages, an increase in union power has: (i) a selection-softening; (ii) a counter-competitive; (iii) a...

We analyze the impact of labour market rigidities on tax competition between two imperfectly integrated countries. Following a shift from a competitive to a unionized labour market in both countries, the capital tax can be adjusted upward in the country with the less rigid labour market, whereas...

This paper examines the effects of trade liberalization between symmetric countries on the skill premium. I introduce skilled and unskilled labour in a model of trade with heterogeneous firms à la Melitz (2003) and assume a production technology such that more productive firms are more skill...