We construct a strategic trade model of an international duopoly, whereby production by exporting firms generates a local pollutant. Governments use environmental policies, i.e., an emissions standard or a tax, to control pollution and for rent shifting purposes. Contrary to their firm, however, governments are unable to perfectly foresee the actual level of demand, the cost of abatement and th...

In this paper we study the optimal import policy in an oligopolistic market with a given number of quantity-setting firms. In the absence of fixed costs, we show that if the policy instrument is an import quota, the optimal policy is either free trade or autarky, while if the instrument is a tariff the optimal policy is neither free trade nor autarky. In the case of fixed costs, we show that co...

In this paper, I explore the effect of fragmentation of production processes on social welfare in the imperfectly competitive market. In particular, I examine the welfare properties of fragmentation from the viewpoint of industrialized countries. Firms located at a country decide whether they produce at home or move their production overseas. I show that there exists Nash equilibrium in which a...

In this paper, whether markets are integrated or segmented is endogenous and is determined by the interaction of demand parameters, tariffs, transportation costs, and arbitrage. Given certain restrictions, it is shown, in equilibrium, that policy makers choose tariffs to segment markets. The effects of trade liberalization (reducing all tariffs to zero) in an endogenous market structure framewo...

In a small open economy with heterogeneous firms, in which tariffs determine the mass of active firms, free trade optimality depends positively on the level of firm heterogeneity and negatively on transportation/adoption costs. The benefits from temporary protection depend on the level of backwardness: for a given mass of backward firms, the relative gains from protection increase with their qu...

This paper discusses the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on market entry and welfare in a model of two countries and two periods. In the first period, firms enter the market as national firms, in the second period, FDI is possible. The paper demonstrates that FDI reduces market entry because equilibrium profits in the second period decline with a decrease in the fixed cost of FDI. The...

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...

We investigate the effect of credit constraints on the growth of exports at the micro level. We develop a stylized dynamic model showing credit constraints play a key role in early stages of exporting, but not in later stages. Our empirical results using product level data on exports to twelve European Union members and the U.S. support the model’s predictions: exports from more credit constrai...

JEL classification: F1 F12 We show theoretically and confirm empirically that domestic productivity has a significant impact on the demand for foreign varieties under the assumption that domestic and foreign varieties are imperfect substitutes. In particular, the demand for imported varieties ismore elastic for countries with comparative advantage. For an average good facing a median trade barr...

This paper investigates the determinants of Spanish vertical intra-industry trade with a large sample of countries. We empirically test the comparative advantage explanation. To this aim, we build physical, human and technological capital stocks. On average, that is using OLS techniques, differences in endowments are a limitation for vertical intra-industry trade. Using quantile regressions tec...