E conomic integration among countries has continued to deepen over the past decade. This is especially visible at the regional level, with the escalation of Regional Integration Agreements (RIAs) ranging from Free Trade Areas (FTAs) to Customs Unions (CUs). Nowadays, many developing countries have entered a new regional integration agreement with developed and developing countries. S...

Empirical evidence confirms that trade exposure can shift resources towards the most efficient firms in an industry and induce substantial increases in aggregate productivity. Although recent studies document that much of world trade is controlled by multinational firms, few examine the effect of foreign direct investment decisions on resource allocation and aggregate productivity. This paper p...

We show that dependence of production on foreign inputs (or non-producible natural resources) can significantly increase the likelihood of indeterminacy. Payment of imported foreign factors of production may act as a semi-fixed cost, amplifying production externalities and returns to scale, making selffulfilling expectations driven busyness cycles easier to arise. This is demonstrated using a s...

Studies revealing the positive relationship between trade and income are often criticized with the argument that “development should mean more than rising incomes”. Taking this argument as a base and utilizing panel data, Davies and Quinlivan [1] have demonstrated that increases in trade are positively associated with future increases in social welfare as measured by the Human Development Index...

Empirical evidence confirms that trade exposure can shift resources towards the most efficient firms in an industry and induce substantial increases in aggregate productivity. Although recent studies document that much of world trade is controlled by multinational firms, few examine the effect of foreign direct investment decisions on resource allocation and aggregate productivity. This paper p...

BACKGROUND Improvements in communication and information technologies have allowed for the globalisation of health services, especially the provision of health services from other countries, such as the use of telemedicine. This has led countries to evaluate their position on whether and to what extent they should open their health systems to trade. This often takes place from the context of mu...

By employing a model with international trade costs and imperfect competition, in which a domestic firm serves both the domestic market and the foreign market, we show that intraindustry trade compared to intersectoral trade is globally, but not mutually, welfare improving. When also foreign firms become active, competition strengthens but domestic welfare declines, because domestic consumers h...

This paper focuses on the importance of accounting harmonisation on foreign activities at a macroeconomic level. International Financing Reporting Standards (IFRS) adoption is considered to reduce information costs among countries and is, therefore, an important way to encourage international trade in goods and investments. The fixed-effects vector decomposition (FEVD) procedure is used to esti...