The safe navigation of ships, especially in narrow shipping waterways, is of the utmost concern to researchers as well as maritime authorities. Many researchers and practitioners have conducted studies on risk assessment for maritime transportation and have proposed risk reduction/control measures accordingly. This article provides a detailed review and assessment of various quantitative risk a...

Over the last three decades, membership in regional trade arrangements has become one of the most important tools of trade diplomacy. Regional agreements bring a lot of benefits for the member countries through reducing barriers and restrictions. Considering the signing of the Interim PTA Agreement between Iran and Eurasia and its effects, this study aimed to investigate the economic effects of...

We study the role of the quality of institutions as a determinant of the location of FDI, using bilateral FDI stocks from OECD countries around the world. While the literature has placed special emphasis on the role of corruption on FDI, we explore a wider range of institutional aspects. We find that better institutions have overall a positive and significant effect on FDI. Especially, unpredic...

This paper investigates the implications for international markets of the existence of retailers/wholesalers with market power. Two main results are shown. First, in the presence of buyer power trade liberalization may lead to retail market concentration. Due to this concentration retail prices may be higher and welfare may be lower in free trade than in autarky, thus reversing the standard e¤e...

This paper uses an oligopoly model with heterogeneous firms to examine how an industry adjusts to rising import competition. The model predicts that in the short run the least efficient firms in the industry become inactive, surviving firms face a fall in output, mark-ups and profits, and the average productivity of survivors increases. These pro-competitive effects of import penetration on the...

This paper analyzes the pattern of provincial economic integration in China for the period 1991−98 by means of an errorcomponents model that decomposes provincial sectoral real valueadded growth into common national effects, industry-specific effects and province-specific effects. We find significant comovements in the long run although province-specific factors still account for one-third of t...

There is a continuing debate about whether international trade is responsible for the observed skilled-unskilled wage gap. In this paper we present a general equilibrium trade model with differentiated goods. We begin with an analytical model and show how changes in relative factor returns can be decomposed into changes in commodity prices, changes in the trade balance, and changes in the facto...

Maritime assets such as merchant and navy ships, ports, and harbors, are targets of terrorist attacks as evidenced by the USS Cole bombing. Conventional methods of securing maritime assets to prevent attacks are manually intensive and error prone. To address this shortcoming, we are developing a decision support system that shall alert security personnel to potential attacks by automatically pr...

 Beijing’s industrial structure is service-oriented with a high degree of economic openness, and GDP has maintained rapid growth. This paper analyzes the international financial crisis and the impact of China’s anti-crisis policies on Beijing’s economic development as well as its transmission mechanism. Impact Index (excluding seasonal factors) and ARMA Model are employed in the empirical...

The exchange rate plays an essential role for firms which export goods and import raw materials. In this paper, the effects of real specific exchange rate fluctuations in imports, exports and aggregate trade on industry sector, chemical and transportation industries outputs in 49 OIC countries were investigated by using a panel data model over 1990-2014. Particularly, this paper presents eviden...