Why is there still so much protectionism in light of political rhetoric extolling the virtues of free trade, favorable economic theory and evidence, and legal pressure to dismantle protectionist measures? The answer rests on four factors and their interactions: globalization, asset specificity, political power, and institutional access. I test the argument using data from 14 EU member states du...

We provide an overview of the economic analysis of the protection and revelation of personal data. In particular, we (1) describe the evolution of the economic theory of privacy, (2) examine privacy-related trade-offs for data subjects and data holders, and (3) highlight the current economic debate on privacy protection. ∗Heinz College, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA; acquisti@andre...

Economists at the Federal Trade Commission pursue the agency’s competition and consumer protection missions. In this year’s essay, with respect to antitrust we discuss the analysis that is used in two areas where the Commission has recently been active: physician combinations and standard essential patents (SEPs). In consumer protection, we discuss the FTC’s recently released national study of ...

Development economists argue that trade protection reduces industrial sector efficiency, mainly through the distortion in relative prices, increased market power, x-inefficiency and inefficient scales of production. Nevertheless there is no convincing evidence on the link between trade reforms and improvement in economic performance. This work examines the case of Uruguay, an economy that intro...

The application of coding theory to security scenarios is studied. Authentication systems are introduced that are based on algebraic codes and provide high protection against an intruder's impersonation and substitution attacks. It is shown that a subliminal channel can be embedded into these systems and that there is a trade-off between the authentication capability, subliminal capacity and er...

This paper indicates that the consequences of regional trade agreements for the world trade system may be deceiving—an arrangement’s apparent virtue may constitute the source of its drawback. In a model where governments have political, as well as economic, motivations, I show that a free trade area induces its members to reduce protection against the non-members, and to do so sufficiently deep...

In this paper, we analyze the issue of optimal tariffs when the Northern and Southern firms compete in quantities in an imperfectly competitive Northern market and there are Ž . potentially varying degrees of intellectual property rights IPR violation by the South. IPR Ž . violation is reflected through the leakage of technological knowledge ‘‘spillovers’’ from the Northern to the Southern firm...

Between 1990 and 2007, 15 southern white (Ceratotherium simum simum) and black (Diceros bicornis) rhinoceroses on average were killed illegally every year in South Africa. Since 2007 illegal killing of southern white rhinoceros for their horn has escalated to >950 individuals/year in 2013. We conducted an ecological-economic analysis to determine whether a legal trade in southern white rhinocer...

a r t i c l e i n f o We measure the effects of trade liberalization over the period of 1993–2002 on regional poverty levels in 259 Indonesian districts, and investigate the labor market mechanisms behind these effects. The identification strategy relies on combining information on initial regional labor and product market structure with the exogenous tariff reduction schedule over four three-y...