We examine the effects of mergers and internal groups (lobbies) in shaping national policies towards foreign direct investment. Lobbying is modeled following the political contributions approach. In this work we develop a partial equilibrium model of an oligopolistic industry in which a number of domestic and foreign firms compete in the market for a homogeneous good in a host country. It is as...

This paper examines the role of the burden of proof (BoP) in National Treatment (NT) disputes under trade agreements. In the situation under study, imports may cause environmental damage, in which case less favorable treatment of imported products may be globally desirable from an international efficiency point of view. But adjudicators do not with full certainty know the motives for policies t...

We explore how integrating into the world economy affects the incomes of manufacturers in less developed countries (LDCs). We show that cutting back trade barriers has asymmetric effects on the incomes of the two typical groups of entrepreneurs. Whereas access to foreign markets benefits those entrepreneurs who are able to run large-scale factories, credit-rationed entrepreneurs running a micro...

This paper studies the impact of trade liberalization in terms of tariff cuts within the Eastern European enlargement on German and Austrian firm productivity. Unique matching of data from 1994 to 2003 suggests that tariff reductions raise parent firm productivity significantly. A ten percentage point decrease in tariff rates can lead to total factor productivity gains of up to 2 percent. The d...

The present study explores the impacts of foreign capital inflows in terms of external debt, foreign direct investment and worker’s remittances on domestic investment in Pakistan economy for the period of 1972-2007. Since the study utilizes the time series data of the sample period so augmented Dickey-Fuller unit root test has been employed to find out each of the time series variables to be st...

The causation relationship between economic growth and military expenditures in developing countries has received growing focus in recent years. One of the arguments in this field is that military spending absorbs a significant proportion of the limited financial resources in LDCs. The present study examines the causal relation in two models: defense spending with total real economic growth and...

This study investigated the relationship between financial development and economic growth for Ireland for the period 1965-2007 using a vector error correction model (VECM). Questions were raised whether financial development causes economic growth or reversely taking into account the positive effect of industrial production index. Financial market development is estimated by the effect of cred...

Does trade liberalization foster total factor productivity (TFP) growth in the manufacturing sector? Does sectoral trade orientation determine sectoral TFP levels and growth rates? These questions are addressed using pooled pre-and post-liberalization panel data from Cameroonian firms of eight manufacturing industries. A single production function for the whole manufacturing sector is estimated...

The aims of the present study are developing a financial stability index (FSI) using banking indices to measure financial stability in Iran, and examining the relationship between financial stability and macroeconomic variables for policymaking. To these ends, we have employed principal-component analysis, out of sample forecasting, Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) method, and V...