A simple two-country model of economic geography is constructed in order to examine the effect of tariff competition on the spatial distribution of manufacturing activities as well as on welfare. We show that when the transport cost is sufficiently small, tariff competition with firm migration leads to a core-periphery economy, where one of the two countries imposes no tariff in Nash equilibriu...

Previous analyses of population aging mainly focused on the social security implications of the aging trend. This paper addresses aging in an open economy framework with two regions that have politically responsive fiscal policy regarding education finance. Demographic shocks start an economic growth process but results are sensitive to a critical parameter in the model that indicates return to...

This paper presents a new measure of international gross capital flows and applies it to a global panel from 1970 to 2004. We explain why paying attention to the gross flows underlying net capital flows may be important and how our gross flow measure differs from the standard measure in the literature. For example, while by the standard measure a capital inflow decline more than fully explains ...

This paper examines the effect of FDI activity on manufacturing exports in four MENA countries. The sensitivity of manufacturing exports and the share in manufacturing exports in total exports to two measures of FDI activity is tested. The findings of this analysis suggest that FDI activity may have a positive effect on the host country’s manufacturing exports. The magnitude of the effect howev...

The aim of this paper is to make a first step towards studying the role of social expenditure and its interaction with corporate taxation in determining the destination of foreign direct investment (FDI) flows. Using panel data for 18 OECD countries and measuring the extent of social welfare policies by the (public social expenditure)/GDP ratio, we find strong support for the conjecture that re...

Foreign direct investment (FDI) has dramatically increased worldwide and is the most important form of all private capital flows to developing countries. Yet, it is an important empirical question whether FDI affects total factor productivity (TFP) positively. We investigate the effect of FDI on TFP growth in a large sample of countries in 1970–2000. Our econometric results indicate that FDI ha...

In the current age of trade and financial openness, local economies in developing countries are becoming increasingly exposed to external investments. The objective of the proposed two-sector model with environmental externalities is to provide an insight into the interaction between external investors and local communities with a focus upon the different strategies and income sources available...

Emerging markets exhibit high returns to capital, the ‘Lucas Paradox,’ alongside volatile growth rate regimes. We investigate the role of long-run risks, i.e., risk due to fluctuations in economic growth rates, in leading to return differentials across countries. We take the perspective of a US investor and outline an empirical strategy to identify risky growth shocks and quantify their implica...