We analyze the causes and mechanisms of inequality in Post-Soviet Union transition economies. First, we show that both economic globalisation – namely, import, export, and foreign direct investment – and institutional factors – namely, privatisation reforms, labour market liberalisation, and product market liberalisation – are strongly associated with within-country rises in inequality. However...

Politicians champion free trade for bringing an era of high and stable growth, although the evidence supporting such claims is ambiguous. Studies that associate increases in trade with increases in gross domestic product often leave open questions of causality: high growth, the result for instance of strong industrial policies, typically leads to more trade. China and India's growth spurts prec...

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Development economists argue that trade protection reduces industrial sector efficiency, mainly through the distortion in relative prices, increased market power, x-inefficiency and inefficient scales of production. Nevertheless there is no convincing evidence on the link between trade reforms and improvement in economic performance. This work examines the case of Uruguay, an economy that intro...

This paper the presents pattern and determinants of intra-industry trade (IIT) in Australian manufacturing since the late 1970s. The results point to a sharp rise in IIT from the mid 1980s which appears to be linked with an outward-oriented policy. Industry level analysis indicates that industries which experienced a sharp fall in protection are the industries with the higher levels of IIT. The...

A two-country model of oligopoly in general equilibrium is used to show how changes in market structure accompany the process of trade and capital market liberalisation. The model predicts that bilateral mergers in which low-cost firms buy out higher-cost foreign rivals are profitable under Cournot competition. With symmetric countries, welfare may rise or fall, though the distribution of incom...

The Japanese Economic Review, 2001, 52(4):405–16. This paper investigates the effects of population growth and China’s entry into the world trading regime on the North and the South. In the absence of the terms of trade effect, population growth reduces the standard of living and causes a decline in welfare. Unilateral trade liberalisation of China will worsen the terms of trade for other count...

The European Commission's attempt to update the Electricity and Gas Directives to underwrite unbundling and full liberalisation coincides with the California electricity crisis. The paper argues that compared to the US, much of the EU lacks the necessary legislative and regulatory power to mitigate generator market power. Unless markets are made more contestable, transmission capacity expanded ...