Three Essays in International Trade

Three Essays in International Trade
Author: Thomas Chaney
Publisher:
Total Pages: 112
Release: 2005
Genre:
ISBN:

(Cont.) This model provides some argument for competitive revaluations. In chapter 3, I build a dynamic model of trade with heterogeneous firms which extends the work of Melitz (2003). As countries open up to trade, they will experience a productivity overshooting. Aggregate productivity increases in the long run, but it increases even more so in the short run. When trade opens up, there are too many firms, inherited from the autarky era. The most productive foreign firms enter the domestic market. Competition is fierce. The least productive firms that are no more profitable are forced to stop production. Not only do the most productive firms increase their size because they export, but the least productive firms stop producing altogether. Aggregate productivity soars. As time goes by, firms start to exit because of age. Competition softens. Some less productive firms resume production. This pulls down aggregate productivity. The slower the exit of firms, the larger this overshooting phenomenon. This model also predicts that the price compression that accompanies trade opening may be dampened in the long run. It also predicts that inequalities should increase at the time when a country opens up to trade, and then gradually recede in the long run.

Three Essays on Oligopolistic Competition, Product Differentiation and International Trade

Three Essays on Oligopolistic Competition, Product Differentiation and International Trade
Author: Fayçal Régis Sinaceur
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 1999
Genre: Competition, International
ISBN:

This Thesis presents three essays in the area of strategic trade theory and policy. The first essay presents an analysis of trade and welfare between countries with asymmetric conditions. A two-period two-country address model of product differentiation is examined in which firms face an initial period of autarky. Trade takes place in the subsequent period and firms fully anticipate switches in trade regimes. Results suggest that historical (domestic) conditions matter a lot on the international market place. Firms that come from countries with a larger market tend to develop longer product lines, which puts that country in a dominant position in international competition. The model is also used to analyse gains/losses from trade in relation to country size. The second essay investigates the differential effects of specific and ad-valorem tariffs on quality, price and welfare in an oligopolistic industry consisting of foreign and domestic firms. These effects are shown to depend on the location of the home and foreign firms in the quality spectrum. Both tariffs are ranked and conditions for either tariff to be welfare superior are derived. Finally, the third essay presents an analysis of trade policy with endogenous market structure. A "third market model" is specified. Using a simple framework in which industry structure is derived endogenously as the outcome of product line decisions by firms, we show that governments have an incentive to affect the equilibrium product composition by setting non-zero subsidy rates in order to maximize domestic welfare. Subsidies may be uniform or non-uniform across goods and the optimal policy exhibits strong discontinuities as domestic welfare maximization implies a switch of regimes.

Three Essays on International Trade

Three Essays on International Trade
Author: Su Wang (Ph. D.)
Publisher:
Total Pages: 152
Release: 2017
Genre:
ISBN:

This thesis consists of three essays about international trade and wage inequality. Essay I characterizes optimal trade and FDI policies in a model with monopolistic competition and firm-level heterogeneity similar to Helpman et al. (2004). I find that both the optimal import tariffs and the optimal FDI subsidies discriminate against the more profitable foreign firms. This is because of the existence of a wedge between the private incentives of exporting and FDI firms, and the incentive of the representative agent. Essay II develops an elementary theory of global supply chains. It considers a world economy with an arbitrary number of countries, one factor of production, a continuum of intermediate goods, and one final good. Production of the final good is sequential and subject to mistakes. In the unique free trade equilibrium, countries with lower probabilities of making mistakes at all stages specialize in later stages of production. Using this simple theoretical framework, it offers a first look at how vertical specialization shapes the interdependence of nations. Essay III proposes a model that has as ingredients heterogeneity of workers and firms, complementarity between occupations within each firm and complementarity between workers and firms/occupations. The competitive equilibrium features positive assortative matching and leads to both within- and between- firm wage variations. Comparative static results are then derived to generate new insights about changes in these components of wage inequality.

Managing the International System Over the Next Ten Years

Managing the International System Over the Next Ten Years
Author: Bill Emmott
Publisher:
Total Pages: 76
Release: 1997
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

The authors of the three individual essays in this book reflect on the challenges, over the next ten years or so, of managing the international system and of democratic industrialized societies in that system. These essays have helped frame a re-examination within the Trilateral Commission of the underlying rationale and needed directions of its work. Bill Emmott argues that "the future is defined more by disorder and obscurity than by order and clarity, and that policies must be shaped accordingly to be agile and to deal with a range of potential dangers.... [The] Trilateral alliance has a role to play that is, if anything, even more crucial in this disordered future." For the reforms needed in Japan, Koji Watanabe contends, "Japan has to be all the more international, all the more engaged and active in the shaping of the international setting within which domestic reform has to take place." Cooperation among advanced industrial democracies will continue to "form an important pillar" for Japan within "multilayer networks of bilateral, regional and functional cooperation." Comparing the current period to the end of the last century, a time of unwarranted complacency about the international order, Paul Wolfowitz argues that the foreign policy stakes for the United States and the other industrialized democracies remain very large: "If we can sustain Trilateral cooperation, we will have a strong base from which to tackle the specific challenges we face."