This paper is a response to Røpke’s (1994) question whether environmental taxes increase or decrease the volume of international trade. Using a three-country Heckscher–Ohlin–Samuelson model, it is shown that the effect can be in either direction. In the absence of pollution haven and three-country effects that reverse natural comparative advantage, environmental taxes decrease (increase) the vo...

En un contexto internacional como el actual, en que las pulsiones proteccionistas vuelven a campar sus anchas, resulta conveniente realizar una mirada retrospectiva hacia aquellas teorías económicas propugnan mayor liberalización comercial modelo de crecimiento económico. Desde los economistas clásicos y antecesores (Adam Smith David Ricardo, entre otros); hasta modelos planteados siglo XX (Hec...

Since changes in trade openness are typically confounded with other factors, it has been difficult to identify the labor market consequences of increased international trade. The advent of the United States Interstate Highway System provides a unique policy experiment, which I use to identify the effect of reducing trade barriers on the relative demand for skilled labor. The Interstate Highway ...

A core prediction of the Heckscher-Ohlin theory is that countries specialize in goods in which they have a comparative advantage, and that the source of comparative advantage is differences in relative factor supplies. To examine this theory, we use the most extensive dataset available and document the pattern of industrial specialization and factor endowment differences in a broad sample of ri...

In a two-country infinite-horizon model, with two traded goods and two factors of production and no international borrowing and lending, there is no convergence of incomes if there is factor-price equalization. With factor-price equalization, the Euler equations of the two economies become identical. I show that in such a set-up if agents have a non-zero probability of death, then we do get con...

Do scale economies contribute to our understanding of international trade? Do international trade flows encode information about the extent of scale economies? To answer these questions we examine the large class of general equilibrium theories that imply Helpman-Krugman variants of the Vanek factor content prediction. Using an ambitious database on output, trade flows, and factor endowments, w...

Does globalization widen inequality or increase income risk? Globalization amplifies the effect of idiosyncratic relative productivity shocks. But wider markets reduce the effect of economy-wide supply shocks on world prices. Both forces are at work in the specific factors continuum model of this paper. Ex post equilibrium exhibits positive (negative) premia for export (import-competing) sector...