The primary goal of any economic policy in the production front is, as far as possible to enhance the degree of sectoral interrelatedness (henceforh SI) within the home economy. The focal objective of such policy is not only to increase the sectoral value added of the economy but also to improve the position of the trade balance in the commodity trade front. Iran, being characterized a sole mon...

I explore the interactions between comparative, competitive and absolute advantage in a two-country model of oligopoly in general equilibrium. Comparative advantage always determines the direction of trade, but both competitive and absolute advantage affect resource allocation, trade patterns and trade volumes. Competitive advantage in the sense of more home firms drives foreign firms out of ma...

Why are trade barriers often used to protect home producers, even at the cost of introducing deadweight losses from higher commodity prices? We add an informational friction to the standard textbook argument in favor of free trade, and show that trade restrictions may be a more efficient policy than a lump sum transfer to the displaced producers. Trade barriers, while generating deadweight loss...

This paper builds a two-country, two-sector (manufacturing and agriculture), non-scale growth model and investigates the relationship between trade patterns and the growth rate of per capita real consumption. If the population growth rate of the home country is higher than that of the foreign country, the following results are obtained. (1) Under autarky, the growth rate of per capita real cons...

This article provides new evidence on the determinants of individual trade-policy preferences using individual-level survey data for the United States. There are two main empirical results. First, we find that factor type dominates industry of employment in explaining support for trade barriers. Second, we find that home ownership also matters for individuals’ trade-policy preferences. Independ...

This paper builds a small-open-economy, non-scale-growth model with negative population growth and investigates the relationship between trade patterns and per capita consumption growth. Under free trade, if the population growth rate is negative and its absolute value is small, the home country becomes an agricultural country. Then, the long-run growth rate of per capita consumption is positiv...

This paper examines a simple model of outsourcing involving matching frictions and home bias in firms’ acquisition of intermediate goods. Two groups of seller firms—local sellers and foreign sellers—may face different degrees of search frictions even though they are identical in terms of productivity. Two groups of buyer firms are considered: one group accepts local and foreign sellers equally,...