Social sanctions may be a strong deterrent of crime. This paper presents a formal model that relates crime and social sanction to social interaction density. We empirically test the theoretical predictions using a provincial level panel dataset on different crimes in Italy between 1996 and 2003. We exploit detailed demographic and geo-morphological information to develop exogenous measures of s...

In this paper we consider three questions. Why do only some firms enter export markets? What are the benefits to the firm from export market entry? Why do some of these firms exit the market at a future date? Using data on UK manufacturing firms from 1988 to 2002 we find evidence that information spillovers between firms can raise the probability of entry and for a matched sample of firms there...

We show for CES demands with heterogeneous production costs that profit, revenue, and output distributions lie in the same class as the productivity distribution (e.g., the "Pareto circle"), although the price distribution lies in the inverse class. We relate distribution shapes via the elasticities of their densities. Introducing product quality decouples the CES circle. Then, all distribution...

This paper extends Symeonidis (2003)’s duopoly model with product differentiation to discusses how FDI spillovers that decreases the quality difference between vertically differentiated products of the home and foreign firms affects the home firm’s decision on plant location. This paper shows that whether the degree of spillover is exogenous or endogenous, it may have a positive relationship wi...

Under plausible assumptions about preferences and technology, the model in this paper suggests that the entire volume of world trade matters for wage inequality. Therefore, trade integration, even among identical countries, is likely to increase the skill premium. Further, we argue that empirical evidence of a falling relative price of skill-intensive goods can be reconciled with the fast growt...

In this paper, we examine the welfare properties of strategic fragmentation under production subsidies. We first consider a case in which a production subsidy rate is given exogenously. We show that, under the fixed subsidy policy, firms choose fragmentation despite the domestic production being socially desirable. Next, we examine a situation in which the government chooses a production subsid...

This paper analyzes the incentives for governments to impose export subsidies when firms invest in a cost saving technology before market competition. Governments first impose an export subsidy or a tax. After observing export policy, firms invest in cost reducing R&D and subsequently compete in the market. Governments subsidize exports under Cournot competition. Under Bertrand competition, exp...

To analyze the effects on prices of simultaneous tariff reductions by multiple importing countries, we construct a simple three-country model where a good is produced by a monopolist with non-constant marginal cost and imported by two countries. We specifically compare two representative tariff-reduction formulas: the "fixed-amount" and the "uniform percentage" reductions. The uniform percentag...

according to the literature, economic liberalization is an important factor affecting the intra industry trade (iit). present paper is trying to examine the positive effect of economic liberalization on iran’s iit as well as to review the effectiveness of important components of economic liberalization including privatization, trade liberalization, exchange rate liberalization and financial lib...

This paper examines the stable outcomes of organization choice between single-plant and multi-plant under asymmetric two regions. A typical implicit assumption on monopolistic competition models for trade and economic geography is that firms can produce and sell only at one place. This paper allows endogenous determination of the number of plants in a new economic geography model. In particular...