Introduction It is easy to understand the opposition to liberalized trade in established markets: Domestic producers loose from increased foreign competition. It is harder to understand the opposition to creating markets, including international markets, where they currently do not exist. Many economists and policymakers have proposed establishing tradable carbon permits to decrease the cost of...

In this paper we examine how preferential trade liberalization affects the terms of trade, external tariffs and welfare of the integrating countries and the rest of the world. Our analysis is based on a three-country, three-good, general equilibrium model with symmetric customs union (CU) members. The model generalizes previous work by considering more general consumer preferences and productio...

This paper examines evidence of the effects of economic liberalization and globalization on rural resource degradation in developing countries. The principal resource effects of concern are processes of land use change leading to forestland conversion, degradation and deforestation. The main trends in globalization of interest are trade liberalization and economy-wide reforms in developing coun...

Title of Document: ESSAYS ON INTERNATIONAL TRADE AND INEQUALITY Lourenço Senne Paz, Doctor of Philosophy, 2009 Directed By: Professor Nuno Limão Department of Economics In this dissertation I assess the impact of developing country trade liberalization on their wage inequality by focusing on two possible channels, namely job formality and inter-industry wage premium. Informal workers are a larg...

This paper develops a general equilibrium model of multi-product firms and analyzes their behavior during trade liberalization. Firm productivity in a given product is modeled as a combination of firm-level “ability” and firmproduct-level “expertise”, both of which are stochastic and unknown prior to the firm’s payment of a sunk cost of entry. Higher firm-level ability raises a firm’s productiv...

In this note, we examine how trade liberalization affects the profits of firms in the presence of network effects. We will show that, contrary to conclusions in the previous literature, trade liberalization between identical countries increases firms’ profits despite intensified competition. (JEL Classification: D43, F12, L13) ∗e-mail: [email protected] †We would like to thank David And...