Background In recent years, accreditation of private hospitals followed by decentralisation of the Italian National Health Service (NHS) into 21 regional health systems has provided a good empirical ground for investigating the Tiebout principle of “voting with their feet”. We examine the infra-regional trade-off between greater patient choice (due to an increase in hospital services supply) an...

Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) are agreements among a set of countries involving preferential treatment of bilateral trade between any two parties to the agreement relative to their trade with the rest of the world. Preferences, however, need not extend to all trade between the two, and the coverage could depend on the type of PTAs. Customs unions and the so-called free trade areas are co...

This paper uses a gravity model to assess ex-post regional trade agreements. The model includes 130 countries and is estimated with panel data over the period 1962–1996. The introduction of the correct number of dummy variables allows for identification of Vinerian trade creation and trade diversion effects, while the estimation method takes into account the unobservable characteristics of each...

This study proposes an approach for quantifying two kinds of costs related to the utilisation regional trade agreements (RTAs). The first, called “procurement adjustment cost,” represents cost involved in meeting rules origin by adjusting procurement sources. second is additional fixed required utilise RTAs, including document preparation certificates origin. Applying our Thailand's imports fro...

Professor Crawford 2 " The ordinary means therefore to increase our wealth and treasure is by foreign trade, wherein we must ever observe this rule; to sell more to strangers yearly than we consume of theirs in value. " Thomas Mun, 1664. The movement of goods and services across borders has been a concern for as long as nation-states have existed. Now, in today's modern society of globalization...