This paper examines the effect of the U.S.-Mexico trade agreement under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The results suggest that U.S. agricultural imports from Mexico have been responsive to tariff rate reductions applied to Mexican products. A one percentage point decrease in tariff rates is associated with an increase in U.S. agricultural imports from Mexico by 5.31% in the f...

This paper investigates the effects of international trade in food on obesity in Mexico. We classify Mexican food imports from the U.S. into healthy and unhealthy and match these with anthropometric and food expenditure survey data. We find that exposure to imports of unhealthy foods significantly contributes to the rise of obesity in Mexico. The empirical evidence also suggests that unhealthy ...

Policymakers in Papua New Guinea want to expand the local rice industry. Currently, imports from Australia meet 99 per cent of rice demand. The Papua New Guinea government has an initial goal of reducing imports by 40 per cent. This self-sufficiency drive is fuelled by the size of the rice import bill, the desire for more jobs and the worry that it is wrong to import food. Concern over rice imp...

The paper analyzes the ongoing urban transformation and delineates an underlying rationale which enables the comprehension of the current dual character of the Arab city with particular reference to the case of Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. The re-reading of city form is mainly based on the critical interpretation of the mechanisms of urban morphology in relation to both global economic imp...

We consider policy issues regarding parallel imports (PIs) of brand-name pharmaceuticals in the European Union, where such trade is permitted. We develop a simple model in which an original manufacturer competes in its home market with PI firms. The model suggests that for small trade costs the original manufacturer will accommodate the import decisions of parallel traders and that the price in...

Globalization has drastically improved access of technological latecomers to advanced technologies and provides a unique opportunity for low-income countries to raise per capita income. This paper shows that low-income countries as a group have in fact substantially increased the GDP-ratio of technology imports over the past few years, but that there are large cross-country discrepancies in tec...

Imports of goods that embody foreign technology can raise a country’s output directly as inputs into production and indirectly through reverse engineering of these goods, contributing to domestic imitation and innovation. This paper quantifies spillovers from high technology imports to domestic imitation and innovation in both developed and developing countries. It then considers the contributi...