The future of the Yemen conflict will be decided about 120 kilometres east of the capital Sanaa, in the city of Marib. So far, the internationally recognised Yemeni gov­ernment, supported by Saudi Arabia, has been able to ward off a two-year offensive from the Houthi movement, which originates...

If one region of the world switches its research effort from dirty to clean technologies, will other regions follow To investigate this question, this paper builds a North-South model that combines insights from directed technological change and quality-ladder endogenous growth models with...

This paper examines whether a Northern firm prefers to export or to engage in FDI to serve the South. If the firm engages in FDI, its technology is imitated, and a Southern firm enters the market that may sell in both markets. The Northern firm may invest to prevent product piracy in the North....

We examine the extent to which developing countries that do little, if any research and development themselves benefit from R&D that is performed in the industrial countries. By trading with an industrial country that has large 'stocks of knowledge' from its cumulative R&D activities, a...

We examine integration strategies of multinational firms that face a rich array of choices of international organization. Each firm in an industry must provide headquarter services from its home country, produce intermediate inputs, and assemble the intermediate goods into final products. Both...

How does the formation of cross-country teams affect the organization of work and the structure of wages? To study this question we propose a theory of the assignment of heterogeneous agents into hierarchical teams, where less skilled agents specialize in production and more skilled agents...

We study the effect of trade liberalization and intellectual property rights (IPR) protection on the unemployment rate of migrants relative to non-migrants. We build a North-South trade and growth model with a positive steady state rate of migration. We find that bilateral trade liberalization...

The paper retrospectively analyses the issue of the impact of international trade on developed countries' labour markets in the 1990s, when the majority of academic opinion denied the role of trade in the misfortunes of unskilled workers. An analytical framework is proposed in which...

This paper analyses the emergence of internal debtor-creditor relationships within a monetary union. Developing a stock-flow consistent model consisting of three regions - North, South, and the Rest of the World (RoW), where North and South form a monetary union - it shows how the simultaneous...

This paper analyses the emergence of internal debtor-creditor relationships within a monetary union. Developing a stock-flow consistent model consisting of three regions - North, South, and the Rest of the World (RoW), where North and South form a monetary union - it shows how the simultaneous...

We construct a model of offshoring with externalities and firm heterogeneity. Due to the presence of externalities, temporary shocks like the Y2K problem can have permanent effects, i.e., they can permanently raise the extent of offshoring in an industry. Also, the initial advantage of a country...

This paper presents a simple two-country model of the role of taxation in capital flows between developed countries ("The North") and developing countries ("The South"). The Southern country is assumed to be unable to enforce a tax on its residents' foreign-source income, and the Northern...

This article discusses the current controversy at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) on the waiver of Intellectual Property Rights for COVID-19 vaccines and personal protective equipment. Predicated on the North-South divide and the need for access to vaccines and personal protective equipment...

We study the incentive that a government in the South has to protect the intellectual property rights of Northern firms, and the consequences of the decision taken by the South for welfare in the North and for efficiency of the world equilibrium. We conduct our analysis in the context of a...

We present a North South model of international trade in which differentiated products are developed in the North. Sectors are populated by final-good producers who differ in productivity levels. Based on productivity and sectoral characteristics, firms decide whether to integrate into the...

I study the short- and long-term effects of regional trade agreements (RTA) with strict intellectual property (IP) provisions. An empirical analysis using gravity methods suggests that regions signing these agreements share more technology in the form of technology licensing following the year...

We consider the differential incentives of the North and the South to provide patent protection to innovating firms in the North. The two regions are assumed to have a different distribution of preferences over the range of exploitable technologies. Due to the scarcity of R&D resources, the two...

We need to establish a shared vision over the historical making, current transformation and future development of the “South”, a conceptual creation of the West in colonial and post-colonial times which needs to be fully redefined. Such redefinition starts from the acknowledgment that...

The incomplete nature of contracts governing international transactions limits the extent to which the production process can be fragmented across borders. In a dynamic, general-equilibrium Ricardian model of North-South trade, the incompleteness of international contracts is shown to lead to...

The debate between the North and the South about the enforcement of intellectual property rights in the South is examined within a dynamic general equilibrium framework in which the North innovates new products and the South imitates them. A welfare evaluation of a policy of tighter intellectual...

The deterioration of the income and employment position of unskilled workers in the OECD area since the 1980s is a well-documented fact. The debate about the causes of this development is dominated by two competing hypotheses, "North-South Trade" or "globalisation" and technological progress....

We develop a North-South model of foreign aid and cross-border pollution resulting from production activities in the recipient country. There is both private and public abatement of pollution, the latter being financed through emissions tax revenue and foreign aid. We characterise a Nash...

This study examines the effect of NAFTA, an instance of North-South trade liberalization, on returns to skill in Mexico. Mexico is abundant in low-skill workers relative to the US and Canada, and so, by the Hecksher-Ohlin-Samuelson trade model, NAFTA ought to have raised the relative earnings of...

This paper examines the relative contribution of openness and the R content of trade to TFP growth for North-South trade-related technology diffusion. The measure of foreign R used in the literature on trade-related technology diffusion imposes identical contributions of openness and the R...

This paper offers novel evidence on agglomeration economies by examining the link between total factor productivity (TFP) and employment density in Italy. TFP is estimated for a large sample of manufacturing firms and then aggregated at the level of Local Labor Market Areas (LLMAs). We tackle...

I study the short- and long-term effects of regional trade agreements (RTA) with strict intellectual property (IP) provisions. An empirical analysis using gravity methods suggests that regions signing these agreements share more technology in the form of technology licensing following the year...

Recent trade negotiations, both at the regional and multilateral level, have seen a resurgence of the issue of trade and labour standards. As the world economy becomes increasingly globalised and the volume of world trade flows keeps increasing between the North and the South, it is very likely...

This paper concerns public input provision as an instrument for redistribution under international outsourcing by using a model-economy comprising two countries, North and South, where firms in the North may outsource part of their low-skilled labor intensive production to the South. We consider...

This paper builds on the assumption that OECD countries are (or will soon be) taking actions to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. These actions, however, will not be sufficient to control global warming, unless developing countries also get involved in the cooperative effort to reduce GHG...

We develop a model to analyze one mechanism under which stronger intellectual property rights (IPR) protection may improve the ability of firms in developing countries to break into export markets. A Northern firm with a superior process technology chooses either exports or technology transfer...

The goal of the paper is to expand and refine the international technology transfer negotiating and analytic agendas and to reframe the issues. The paper presents concepts, indicators, illustrations and data that identify and measure international transfers of energy technologies that can be...

Past empirical failures of the basic Heckscher-Ohlin-Vanek (HOV) model related to the inability of data to meet its restrictive assumptions, particularly identical international technologies and factor price equalization. Trefler (1993) tried to resuscitate HOV by introducing a simple...

This paper looks at a model in which two countries trade agricultural and manufactured commodities. The manufactured-goods sector produces with increasing returns to scale under conditions of monopolistic competition. It is shown that an increase in land endowment (or an increase in agricultural...

Based on static analysis, a number of studies argue that forming a RTA is more likely to raise welfare if member countries are "natural trading partners," while other studies claim the opposite. This paper considers the argument from a dynamic viewpoint by examining the impact of trade with...

In this note, we present a novel channel for a brain gain. Students from a developing country study in a developed host country. A higher permanent migration probability of these students appears to be a brain drain for the developing country in the first place. However, it induces the host...

This paper examines the impact on TFP of North-South trade-related technology diffusion in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). North-South R&D flows are constructed based on industry-specific R&D in the North, North-South trade patterns, and input-output relations in the South. The main...

The entry of a low-wage country into a world economy with pre-existing wage differentials puts the gains from trade in a former low-wage and then medium-wage country under pressure. If negotiations over the formation of a free trade area cover international transfers, there is a strong...