This paper investigates how a country’s geographic position relative to other countries affects the quality of its exports. The two driving forces are the supply-side response to the specific transportation cost (generalized Alchian-Allen effect) and the stronger preference for quality in richer countries. Producers who may be unable to adjust quality for every market will choose a common quali...

The present paper studies the effect of the choice of product quality on trade and location of firms. We discuss a model where consumers have preferences for the quality of a set of differentiated varieties. Firms do not only develop and sell manufacturing varieties in a monopolistic competitive market but also determine the quality level of their varieties by investing in research and developm...

In a market where sellers are heterogeneous with respect of the quality of their good and are more informed than buyers, high quality sellers’ chances to trade might depend on their ability to inform buyers about the quality of the goods they offer. We study how the strength of competition among sellers affects the ability of sellers of high quality goods to achieve communication by means of ap...

This paper addresses the dynamics of income inequality, both within and across countries. In an endogenous growth model with North-South trade, the dynamics of income inequality depend on the ability of workers to adapt to new technologies, captured by the quality of education. For developing countries with low quality of education, Southern trade liberalization leads to: 1) an overall decline ...

This paper analyzes the impact of e-commerce on markets where established firms face competition from Internet-based entrants with focused offerings. In particular, we study the retail brokerage sector where the growth of online brokerages and the availability of alternate sources of information and research services have challenged the dominance of traditional brokerages. We develop a stylized...

The software product line approach has been applied as a successful software reuse technique for specific domains. Such an approach takes advantage of domain and application engineering concepts. One of its most important artifacts is the product line architecture because it explicitly represents similarities and variabilities of a product line, as well as the products that can be generated. Pr...

For years the schema theorem has been a principal mathematical foundation for Genetic Algorithms. This article briefly describes a trade-off involving crossover and mutation with respect to schema length. The one-max function, a variant of it, and finding snakes in hypercubes are used to demonstrate this trade-off, looking at the impact on solution quality solution and number of function evalua...

OBJECTIVES (i) To document the current state of the English, Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish and Australian bowel cancer screening programmes, according to seven key characteristics, and (ii) to explore the policy trade-offs resulting from inadequate funding. SETTING United Kingdom and Australia. METHODS A comparative case study design using document and key informant interview analysis. Da...

Recent trade policy debates have focused increasingly on the supposed barriers caused by di¤ering country regulations, and at proposed remedies such as mutual recognition agreements. There are several motives for setting minimum quality standards in an open economy. This paper examines the motive of correcting an undersupply of quality when an industry is monopolistic, and sets up a theoretical...