This paper examines the effect of government intervention via taxation on domestic welfare. A case-study of Brazilian market power on rubber markets during the boom years of 1870-1910 shows that the government generated 1.3% of GDP through an export tax on rubber but that it could have generated 4.7% in total, had the government set the tariff at the optimal level. National, regional and local ...

We examine empirically the effect of international outsourcing on labour demand at the level of the individual plant. We do so by estimating a dynamic model of plant level labour demand, using a Generalised Method of Moments estimator. We use plant level data for the Irish Electronics sector, an industry that has expanded rapidly over the last decade and that has witnessed significant offshorin...

We provide the first evidence that changes in risk-based capital requirements for banks affect the real economy through international trade. Using a natural experiment – mandatory Basel II adoption in its Standardized Approach by all banks in Turkey on July 1, 2012 – we investigate the impact of new risk-weights applied to commercial letters of credit (CLC) on that country’s exports to 174 coun...

This paper examines the determinants of intra-firm trade in US imports using detailed country-product data. We create a new measure of product contractibility based on the degree of intermediation in international trade for the product. We find important roles for the interaction of country and product characteristics in determining intra-firm trade shares. Intra-firm trade is high for products...

Corporate organization varies within countries and between countries. We develop a theory which explains the variation in levels of decentralization across firms and links it to the trade environment that firms face. We introduce firms with internal hierarchies in a Melitz and Ottaviano (2008) model of international trade. We show that international trade increases the conflict of interest betw...

Within the recent literature studying participation in international markets using micro data, a small number have suggested that firms benefit from their exposure to international markets. One channel considered for this role has been investments in R&D. A common finding in this literature is that firms involved in international trade are also more likely to also undertake R&D. In this paper w...

After the collapse of fixed exchange rate system Bretton Woods, fluctuations and its impact on macroeconomic performance trade in countries around world are becoming an increasing debate among researchers policymakers. This study empirically investigates whether real may affect exports Indian context. The has employed autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bound test procedure to analyse long-ru...

Periodic elections are the main instrument through which voters can hold politicians accountable. From this perspective term limits, which restrict voters’ ability to reward politicians with re-election, appear counterproductive. We show that despite the disciplining effect of elections, term limits can be ex ante welfare improving from the perspective of voters. By reducing the value of holdin...

From the literature on decentralization, it appears that the …scal vertical imbalance is somehow inherent to multi-level governments. Using a stylized model we show that this leads to a reduction in the extent of redistributive …scal policies if the maximal tolerable size of government has been reached. To test for this empirically we use some high quality data, from the LIS dataset, on individ...