In this paper, we aim at investigating from a game theory perspective whether trade liberalization can promote a collusive intra-industry trade and whether such a collusive trade is always socially desirable compared to the autarchy solution. We show that, under Cournot competition, economic integration is anti-competitive if collusive trade is a possible outcome of the repeated game; under pri...

One of the longstanding questions in international economics is how to get a country with an economy mired in import protection to one characterized by free trade. Reciprocity and unilateralism are the two most popular answers that economists propose. Unilateralism, or “going alone” with trade liberalization, is the standard policy prescription for a small country that, by definition, cannot af...

Food security commands much attention from policy makers and economists in China as well as in other less developed countries. Following WTO accession, the impact of trade liberalization has also received much comment, particularly the linkage between food security and opening the border to more agricultural trade. To better understand how food security is affected by trade policies, this paper...

Nat iona l and international economic policy has usually ignored the environment. In areas where the environment is beginning to impinge on policy, as in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), it remains a tangential concern, and the presumption is often made that economic growth and economic liberalization (including the liberaliz...

We construct a model of trade with heterogeneous retailers to examine the effects of trade liberalization on retail market structure, imports and social welfare. We are especially interested in studying the degree of pass-through of import into retail prices and the effects of retail market regulation. The paper shows that the degree of pass-through may be large when market structure effects ar...

This paper estimates the markup for the Mexican manufacturing sector to detect the impact of trade liberalization on market power. Using Hall’s proposal that states that a procyclical Solow residual is an indication of market power, this research estimates the markup for different periods to detect the change in market power after trade liberalization was implemented. We account for the potenti...