Essays in International Trade and Public Economics


Book Description

The essays of this book are contributions to the empirical Literature in International Trade and Public Economics. They deal with the relationship between the structure and quality of the public sector and the process of economic integration. Two of the essays add to the empirical determinants of trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) and to the numerous applications of the theory of government decentralization. Decentralization tends to discourage inward FDI and domestic trade and to increase imports and exports. A third essay focuses on the effect of governments' intangible assets - such as consumer perceptions about countries and products from these countries - on FDI. A country's nation brand is shown to have a significant and large positive effect on investment flows.




The Gains from Trade and the Gains from Aid


Book Description

This book focuses on the normative side of trade theory and is divided into five parts: * trade under perfect competition; * restricted trade under perfect competition; * trade under imperfect competition and other distortions; * Compensation: lumpsum, non-lumpsum or neither? * International trade










Three Essays on International Trade


Book Description

This thesis consists of three essays about international trade and wage inequality. Essay I characterizes optimal trade and FDI policies in a model with monopolistic competition and firm-level heterogeneity similar to Helpman et al. (2004). I find that both the optimal import tariffs and the optimal FDI subsidies discriminate against the more profitable foreign firms. This is because of the existence of a wedge between the private incentives of exporting and FDI firms, and the incentive of the representative agent. Essay II develops an elementary theory of global supply chains. It considers a world economy with an arbitrary number of countries, one factor of production, a continuum of intermediate goods, and one final good. Production of the final good is sequential and subject to mistakes. In the unique free trade equilibrium, countries with lower probabilities of making mistakes at all stages specialize in later stages of production. Using this simple theoretical framework, it offers a first look at how vertical specialization shapes the interdependence of nations. Essay III proposes a model that has as ingredients heterogeneity of workers and firms, complementarity between occupations within each firm and complementarity between workers and firms/occupations. The competitive equilibrium features positive assortative matching and leads to both within- and between- firm wage variations. Comparative static results are then derived to generate new insights about changes in these components of wage inequality.




The Political Economy of International Trade Law


Book Description

International experts from law, economics and political science provide in-depth analysis of international trade issues. Attorneys, economists and political scientists adopt a common viewpoint, entitled 'transcending the ostensible'. This approach directs particular attention to the possibility that WTO legal institutions, like other international legal institutions, will function in unexpected ways due to the political and economic conditions of the international environment in which they have been created, and in which they operate. A range of trade problems are considered here. Topics include the constitutional dimensions of international trade law, adding subjects and restructuring existing subjects to international trade law, the legal relations between developed and developing countries, and the operation of the WTO dispute settlement procedure. This will be an essential volume for professionals and academics involved with international trade policy.




Economic Theory and International Trade


Book Description

This volume contains papers on Economic Theory and International Trade: The papers on Economic Theory cover the existence and structure of competitive equilibrium in various settings: non-convexities, non-transitivity of preferences, and absence of differentiability or free-disposal assumptions, the role of the compensating variation as a welfare measure, oligopoly under bounded rationality, and regulation of a public utility. The papers on International Trade offer analyses of the "Dutch disease" or the Atlantic Slave Trade, or treat the influence of economic growth on import demand, the terms of trade, and other economic variables, as well as theoretical and empirical evidence for the validity of the Heckscher-Ohlin model. The papers, rigorous and often requiring mathematical sophistication, variously reflect Trout Rader's work.




Essays in International Economics


Book Description

Written form 1957 through 1978 by one of the foremost authorities in the field of international economics, this collection of Peter Kenen's previously published essays deals with issues in the pure theory of international trade, international monetary theory, and international monetary reform. The essays in Part I, "Trade, Tariffs, and Welfare," concern the roles of tangible and human capital in the determination of trade patterns, the joint determination of demand conditions and trade patterns, the gains from international trade, and the effects of migration on economic welfare. Part II, "International Monetary Theory and Policy," contains essays on the theory of gold-exchange standard, the determination of forward exchange rates, the demand for international reserves, economic integration and the delineation of currency areas, and the process of balance of payments adjustment under pegged and floating exchange rates. The essays in Part III, "Monetary Reform and the Dollar," are arranged in chonological order, from 1963 through 1977, and focus on the problems and progress of international monetary reform and on the functioning of the present international monetary system. Peter B. Kenen is Walker Professor of Economics and International Finance at Princeton University. The Princeton Sereies of Collected Essays provides facsimile reprints, in paperback and in cloth, of important articles by leading scholars. Originally published in 1981. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.




From Here to Free Trade


Book Description

In his new book, Ernest Preeg analyzes international trade and investment in the 1990s and lays out a comprehensive U.S. trade strategy for the uncertain period ahead. He examines the influence of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and argues that economic globalization is beneficial to the U.S. economy in the short- to medium-term while raising important questions about national sovereignty and security over the longer term. Preeg believes regional free trade agreements will soon encompass the majority of world trade, but they can conflict with the WTO's multilateral objectives. The central challenge for U.S. trade strategy, then, is to integrate the now largely separate multilateral and regional tracks of the world trading system. The first essay assesses U.S. interests in economic globalization, the second examines recent steps toward free trade at the multilateral and regional levels, and the next three offer an in-depth critique of U.S. regional free trade objectives in the Americas, across the Pacific, and possibly with Europe. The final essay presents a multilateral/regional synthesis for going from here to free trade over the coming decade.




Empirical Methods in International Trade


Book Description

Internationalization of the world economy has made trade a key factor in the growth potential of nearly every economy. Hence, economists have become increasingly interested in the determinants of international trade and competitiveness. Empirical Models i