Variety Gains from Trade in Switzerland

Domestic productivity and variety gains from trade

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...

Capital Gains Taxation: Some Experience from Switzerland

This paper discusses capital gains taxation on movable property in Switzerland which was completely abolished at the canton level in 1996 but is now under political discussion as a tax at the confederation level. Economic reasoning on the features of the Swiss tax system and empirical results for canton data on the capital gains tax in the past suggest that such a tax has a negative effect on r...

Globalization and the Gains from Variety

Since the seminal work of Krugman (1979), product variety has played a central role in models of trade and growth. In spite of the general use of love-of-variety models, there has been no systematic study of how the import of new varieties has contributed to national welfare gains in the United States. In this paper we show that the unmeasured growth in product variety from US imports has been ...

Measurable Dynamic Gains from Trade

Trade Costs and the Gains from Trade in Crop Agriculture

We develop a simulation model of world crop markets that is based upon Ricardian comparative advantage. We apply the model to twenty-three countries and provide measures of the degree of globalization in this sector, the gains from trade, and the elasticity of trade volumes to trade costs. The distribution of the gains from trade across countries is uneven due to important differences in openne...