We examine how changes in yield variability affect the welfare of cereal grain and oilseed buyers and producers around the world. We simulate trade patterns and welfare for 21 countries with a Ricardian trade model that incorporates bilateral trade costs and crop yield distributions. The model shows that world trade volumes would need to increase substantially if crop yield variability were to ...

Traditional computable general equilibrium (CGE) models based on the Armington assumption fail to capture the extensive margin of trade, and thereby underestimate the trade and welfare effects of trade opening. To address this problem, this paper introduces the Melitz (2003) theoretical framework with firm heterogeneity and fixed exporting costs into a global CGE model. Some illustrative simula...

We generalize the standard search, matching, and bargaining framework to allow individuals to acquire productivity-enhancing schooling prior to labor market entry. As is wellknown, search frictions and weakness in bargaining position contribute to under-investment from an efficiency perspective. However, in a model with vacancy creation on the part of firms, changes in the bargaining position o...

The theory of neoclassical welfare economics largely shaped international and national agricultural policies during the Cold War period. It treated technology as an exogenous factor that could boost agricultural productivity but not necessarily sustainable agriculture. New growth theory, the economic theory of the new knowledge economy, treats technological change as endogenous and argues that ...

We develop a model with money and credit where agents have different productivity to study credit and allocation. We show the link between the credit rationing, productivity and monetary policy, and study the distributional effects of monetary policy on the credit constraints, money holdings, and the ability to trade across agents. An agent’s productivity reflects his ability to replenish the m...

Since objective news coverage is vital to democracy, captured media can seriously distort collective decisions. The current paper develops a voting model where citizens are uncertain about the welfare e¤ects induced by alternative policy options and derive information about those e¤ects from the mass media. The media might however secretly collude with interest groups in order to in‡uence the p...

Conclusions The ‘footloose’ effect of MNE ownership is attributable to the nature of the plants they close. Multinationals are more likely to close plants that are weakest relative to the firm. There is a high degree of similarity between the plants closed by multiplant firms regardless of whether they are MNE or not. However, MNEs offshore high wage plants while domestic multiplant firms outso...

Since objective news coverage is vital to democracy, captured media can seriously distort collective decisions. The current paper develops a voting model where citizens are uncertain about the welfare effects induced by alternative policy options and derive information about those effects from the mass media. The media might however secretly collude with interest groups in order to influence th...

Animal welfare during and as a result of transport can be assessed by using a range of behavioural, physiological, pathological and carcass-quality indicators that are described in this paper. Measures of the extent of any disease, injury or mortality resulting from, or exacerbated by, transport are important because health is an important part of welfare. Many of the indicators are measures of...

We estimate productivities at the sector level for 72 countries and 5 decades, and examine how they evolve over time in both developed and developing countries. In both country groups, comparative advantage has become weaker: productivity grew systematically faster in sectors that were initially at greater comparative disadvantage. These changes have had a significant impact on trade volumes an...