To examine the impact of globalization on managerial compensation, we consider a matching model where a number of firms compete both in the product market and in the managerial market. We show that globalization, i.e. the simultaneous integration of product markets and managerial pools, leads to an increase in the heterogeneity of managerial salaries. Typically, while the most able managers obt...

This article investigates common economic consequences of population aging and economic integration for agglomeration processes. We introduce demography into the New Economic Geography by generalizing the constructed capital approach to account for changes in the age structure of the population. Interestingly, the level of trade costs triggering catastrophic agglomeration is rather sensitive to...

Why Corporate Taxes May Rise: The Case of Trade Liberalization and Foreign Ownership* Almost all the literature on tax competition in the presence of multinationals (MNCs) and profit shifting ignores trade costs. This Paper studies how economic integration, in terms of reduced trade costs and internationalization of ownership, affects tax competition and equilibrium corporate taxes. We find tha...

This paper suggests that the institutional basis necessary to support efficient intemational trade is provided not only by treaties among national governments but also by international coalitions of private agents. International commercial arbitration is an important example of these private coalitions. The paper reviews the provisions and the practice of international arbitration, and presents...

I show in this paper that incomplete contracts affect a firm’s decision about serving foreign customers through exports or local sales from an affiliated plant. When contracts between two agents within a firm are too costly to write, the share of multinational firms may be higher or lower compared to a world without contractual frictions. Incomplete contracts also provide a novel explanation fo...

The flows of traded goods across countries are known to follow a gravity pattern: their volumes are greater between countries that are larger in size and closer to each other. We find a similar pattern in the flows of territories across countries between 1870 and 2008. During this period, countries experienced inflows and outflows of territories, mirroring the international flows of goods. We f...

I study the conversion of 13,000 miles of railroad track in the U.S. South to standard gauge on May 31 and June 1, 1886 as a large-scale natural experiment in compatibility. Using route-level freight traffic data, I find a large redistribution of traffic from steamships to railroads that declines with distance, with no effect on prices or aggregate shipments due to carriers’ anticompetitive con...

The enlargement of the European Union will bring many political, economical and structural changes on the Continent, which require careful and deep analysis to be made. This paper will grasp the enlargement of the European Union from the aspect of the trade pattern and trade specialization of six major European Union candidates; namely, Turkey, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Poland and the Czech R...

We characterise the relationship between two network based oligopoly markets when local players share the interconnection’s ownership. To that purpose, we analyse the case of the Bacton (UK)-Zeebrugge (Belgium) natural gas pipeline using Vector Auto-regressive Representation techniques. We conclude that there is a threshold of capacity deployment after which the two local markets split. As a re...

EU enlargement is supposed to entail profound impact on the location of economic activities in Europe. Although there is concern about the implications of enlargement for regional disparities in the EU, corresponding empirical results are still rare. The objective of this analysis is to provide empirical evidence on enlargement effects with a special focus on border regions in the EU27 since th...