This paper reviews the scientific contributions of Paul Krugman to the study of international trade, on the occasion of his receipt of the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. A simplified exposition is presented of some of his principal findings, including: the effects of trade on firm scale and product diversity in a general model of monopolistic competition; the integration of monopolisti...

Feldstein and Horioka (Econ J 90:314–329, 1980) observed that saving and investment move closely together in the major OECD countries. This finding is a puzzle if national economies are characterized by one sector neoclassical production functions—with diminishing returns to capital, a high level of savings in a country should create an incentive to export capital. In this paper, we show that t...

We propose a theory that explains why international trade can widen a wage gap between top income-earners and others. In the basic model, we consider two symmetric countries in which individuals with different abilities work either as knowledge workers, who develop products produced in a differentiated-good sector, or as production workers, who engage in actual production processes. In equilibr...

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Informal discussions on international trade attribute much importance to organizational differences. Nevertheless, economic theories of international trade have not been extended to incorporate this important element. This paper integrates theories of internal organization with a model of international trade by adding another dimension — how decisions regarding which ideas or projects to accept...

Ethnic Networks and International Trade There is a well-established high quality literature on the role of networks, particularly ethnic networks, in international trade. Ethnic networks are a way of overcoming informal barriers (information costs, risk and uncertainty) to trade by building trust and substituting for the difficulty of enforcing contracts internationally. The networks we are int...

CGE models are utilized for the evaluation of trade policy reforms, yet they are typically highly aggregated, limiting their usefulness to trade negotiators interested in impacts at the tariff line. Partial Equilibrium (PE) models used for disaggregate analysis lack the benefits of an economy-wide analysis required to examine the overall impact of trade policy reforms. This suggests the need fo...

JEL classification: F12

This paper examines the impact of American public attitudes toward foreign countries on the volume of trade. The issue is whether popular attitudes, as elicited in these surveys, convey any information about trust, risk, or transactions costs beyond what can be explained through standard economic models. The results of this paper suggest that they do, with a one standard deviation increase in w...