This paper examines the welfare implications of an existence of free trade agreements (FTAs) and customs unions (CUs) in the GATT system, in the presence of cross-foreign ownership among countries. In particular, two GATT regimes are analyzed: a pure GATT regime without any regional free trade agreements, and modified GATT regime with either an FTA or a CU. This paper argues that, when foreign ...

The world’s largest retailers—Walmart, Carrefour, Tesco, and Metro—all entered China after 1995. They established hundreds of stores as well as centers for procuring goods to be sold worldwide. Multinational retailers may affect Chinese exports through two channels. First, they could inform outlets in other countries where they operate about the products offered by local Chinese suppliers, ther...

The title needs clarification because it suggests a broad theme concerning the relative ability of contending groups to obtain tariffs or quotas or other special devices serving to raise that industry or firm’s domestic prices above their levels if trade were free. This note is intended to focus more narrowly on a particular model scenario, that of the specific factors type, in which two firms ...

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...

We explore the role of the ownership structure of capital in an economy that suffers from barriers to entry and an imperfect financial system. In such an environment, an unequal distribution of capital provides an explanation for trade flows and trade gains even when countries do not differ in relative factor endowments or available technologies. Moreover, an uneven asset distribution is associ...

Using a competitive two-country two-commodity monetary model with optimizing agents in which persistent unemployment arises, this paper examines the effects of trade restrictions on consumption and employment in the two countries. When facing unemployment, a country tends to impose an import restriction so that domestic firms will increase production and raise employment. However, this policy i...

Using a competitive two-country two-commodity monetary model with optimizing agents in which persistent unemployment arises, this paper examines the effects of trade restrictions on consumption and employment in the two countries. When facing unemployment, a country tends to impose an import restriction so that domestic firms will increase production and raise employment. However, this policy i...

This paper proposes to reexamine the GATT/WTO membership effect on bilateral trade flows, using nonparametric methods including pair-matching, permutation tests, and a Rosenbaum (2002) sensitivity analysis. Taken together in a coherent manner, these methods provide an estimation framework that is robust to misspecification biases, allows general forms of heterogeneous treatment effects, and add...

The Enders and Granger (1998) unit-root test against stationary alternatives with asymmetric adjustment is applied to the extended Nelson and Plosser dataset. The test rejects the unit-root null roughly as frequently as does the ADF test. JEL Classification C32, E32 * Correspondence: Philip Rothman Department of Economics East Carolina University Greenville, NC 27858 Phone: 252-328-6151 Fax: 25...

the main objective of this paper is to study the relationship between the energy consumption (energy use intensity), economic growth, and co2 emission in iran. to that end, we use time series data of iran during 1967–2004. in order to examine the long-run relationship among these variables, the johanson-juselius cointegration method is used along with vecm. the main finding of this study shows ...