This paper examines the impact of trade liberalization on U.S. Congressional elections. We nd that U.S. counties subject to greater competition from China via a change in U.S. trade policy exhibit relative increases in turnout, the share of votes cast for Democrats and the probability that the county is represented by a Democrat. We nd that these changes are consistent with Democrats in o ce du...

This paper discusses the measurement of production and employment effects of trade policy, and more broadly the effects of economic integration and globalization. First, it provides a broad-brush overview of the ex-post literature linking trade to performance, such as measures of worker displacement, adjustment costs, and econometric evidence on trade and wages. It then defines structural impac...

Mercosur has achieved important advances like the removal of intrabloc tariff and non-tariff barriers and the establishment of a common external tariff for most products. However, its ambitious plans to deepen the integration process comprising harmonisation of policies in areas like competition policy, government procurement, technical barriers and phytosanitary measures have not been implemen...

Despite widespread belief that membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) improves the quality of governance, there is no convincing empirical evidence. Here, we investigate whether WTO membership has a causal effect on firm-level reports of political corruption using a nonparametric partial identification approach to bound the average treatment effect (ATE). We also analyze conditional A...

Using a simple monopoly model, we examine the effects of economic integration. We show that the number of markets and the shape of marginal revenue curves are crucial to evaluate economic integration when the marginal cost is not constant. The effects of tariff-reductions in a three-country model are in contrast with those in a two-country model. The effects also depend on what trade policy the...

MARKET STRUCTURE, TRADE LIBERALIZATION AND THE GATS J.F. Francois and I. Wooton Abstract: In this paper we consider the impact of improved domestic market access for a foreign service provider. We emphasize the interaction between the different modes of market access commitments in services (cross-border and establishment) market structure, and regulation. We work with a model where the domesti...

The few existing empirical studies of U.S.-Japan trade agreements have relied primarily on descriptive statistics or univariate time series methods. We conduct a more powerful test by evaluating agreements in the context of well-specified econometric models. Consistent with trade theory, import demand is modeled as a cointegrating relationship with income and relative price variables, where a t...

In a simple model where global trade negotiations precede sequential Free Trade Agreement (FTA) formation, we show global tari¤ negotiations can prevent global free trade: FTA formation can yield global free trade in the absence of global tari¤ negotiations, but global free trade never emerges when global tari¤ negotitaions precede FTA formation. Intuitively, global tari¤ negotiations can preve...

1 Course Information • Office Hours: Monday, 3-4 pm. If this time does not work for you, you can schedule an appointment by sending an email to Shubhangi. • Grading: There will be about 3 problem sets and everyone will have to scribe notes for one lecture each on an average. • Webpage: The link for the course webpage is http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~ss1984/ complexity-F13.htm. • Recommended Book...

The effect of Schaffer collateral/commissural fiber kindling on the expression levels of GABA A receptor ill, fiE, and f13 subunit mRNA in the pyramidal and granular neurons of the rat dorsal hippocampus was studied, using semi-quantitative in situ hybridization. In pyramidal neurons of CA1 and CA3, only small changes (10-15%) were found. In dentate granule neurons, the expression level of GABA...