why voluntary export restraints are voluntary the paper presents an analysis of the effect upon an oligopolistic equilibrium of introducing a voluntary export restraint ver upon an importing firm a ver set at the free trade level of imports is shown to raise the profits of all firms within the industry the result follows as the imposition of a ver upon a free trade nash price competition forces the domestic firm to become an industry price leader the ver raises industry prices by facilitating collusion and lowers consumer welfare pourquoi les restrictions volontaires d 1 exportation sont volontaires ce memoire presente une analyse des effets de l introduction de restrictions volontaires a l exportation rve sur une entreprise qui importe dans un monde en equilibre oligopolistique on montre que l introduction de rve approximant le niveau des importations en regime de libre echange devrait augmenter les profits de toutes les entreprises dans l industrie cela decoule du fait que l imposition de rve sur un univers de concurrence par les prix a la nash en regime de libre echange force l entreprise domestique a devenir le leader en prix l introduction de rve augmente le niveau des prix de l industrie en facilitant la collusion et de ce fait reduit le niveau de bien etre des consomrnateurs

price setting supergames with capacity constraints this paper examines the role of industry capacity in enforcing collusion in the context of repeated games for a fixed capacity per firm it is shown that changes in the number of firms have a non monotone effect on the best enforceable cartel price this is due to the fact that while an additional firm lowers the share that each of the other firms enjoys at the collusive price it also increases the losses to each firm should the cartel fail

voluntary export restraints and expectations an analysis of export quotas in oligopolistic markets the frequency of export quotas imposed as voluntary export restraints has been increasing this tends to create the expectation that similar export quotas will be imposed in the future even if free trade is allowed now the author analyzes the effect of such an expectation he demonstrates that if a quota is expected to be imposed on foreign exporting firms it intensifies the exporting firms competition in the prequota period this offsets the protection which the export quota as a voluntary export restraint will provide for domestic import competing firms in the future quota period copyright 1989 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

market equilibrium under the threat of a ver abstract this paper characterizes market equilibrium under oligopoly when a ver has introduced both asymmetry amongst exporters and uncertainty a restrained and an unrestrained exporter choose price strategically under the threat of a ver on the latter a pure strategy equilibrium is shown to result only when the probability of the ver is high otherwise a unique mixed strategy equilibrium results as the probability of the ver rises the expected domestic price rises even if the ver is not imposed

endogenous trade policy under foreign direct investment abstract using bernheim and whinston 1986 common agency game we endogenize trade policy in a duopoly composed of a domestic firm and a foreign firm where both firms influence the domestic government s trade policy via their contributions the foreign firm can jump over trade restrictions by undertaking foreign direct investment fdi in the domestic market the government prefers a voluntary export restraint ver to a tariff for two reasons first a ver leads to higher contributions from the foreign firm than a tariff second a ver provides a higher level of protection to the domestic firm without generating fdi by the foreign firm

tariffs versus quotas with strategic investment the relative efficiency of tariffs versus quotas is analyzed in a cournot oligopoly with strategic investment introducing quota licence fees to neutralize the international distributional effect when such licence fees remove quota rents from foreign firms then for the case of constrained entry with a sufficiently large number of firms quotas frequently hold a welfare advantage since tariffs relatively aggravate the inefficiency from overinvestment in the case of free entry and exit however tariffs hold a welfare advantage since there is greater benefit of increasing returns to scale to the economy by avoidance of excessive entry of firms

trade policy subtleties with multinational firms abstract regional trade blocks must specify domestic content rules that define the conditions under which a good qualifies as domestic and so may be freely traded within the block this paper analyzes such rules focussing on oligopolistic industries in which foreign multinationals rely much more on imported intermediate inputs that do domestic firms in such a situation we argue that domestic content provisions are anti competitive reducing overall final output of the industry and shifting rents to domestic firms these ideas are examined analytically and then numerically using an applied general equilibrium model of the north american auto industry

contract duration and relationship specific investments empirical evidence from coal markets this paper examines the importance of specific relationship investments in determining the duration of coal contracts negotiated between coal suppliers and electric utilities data for 277 coal contracts are used to perform the analysis the results provide strong support for the view that buyers and sellers make longer commitments to the terms of future trade at the contract execution stage and rely less on repeated bargaining when relationship specific investments are more important

content protection and tariffs under monopoly and competition abstract this paper compares the relative efficiency of local content schemes and tariffs as alternative means of achieving certain non economic distributional objectives the efficiency comparison is made under the alternative assumptions that an intermediate good component is produced a competitively and b by a single firm the paper shows how the ranking of tariffs and content schemes i is sensitive to these assumptions and ii depends on the local content ratio and the elasticity of demand for components the possible implications of vertical integration in the production process and rent revenue seeking behaviour are also considered insofar as they affect the ranking of policies

trade costs and multimarket collusion contrary to conventional wisdom this article argues that trade liberalization may facilitate collusion and reduce welfare with the help of a duopoly model in which firms interact repeatedly in multiple markets we first show that if trade costs i e tariffs transport costs and discount factors are not too high efficient cartel agreements necessitate the cross hauling of goods as that entails lower deviation incentives in this setting we then demonstrate that reciprocal trade liberalization always raises total output when trade costs are within a range whose lower bound exceeds a threshold level but may reduce total output and thus be pro collusive when trade costs are below that threshold level

trade liberalisation and poverty what are the links this paper asks whether a developing country s own trade liberalisation could translate into increased poverty and what information would be required to identify whether it will do so it plots the channels through which such effects might operate identifying the static effects via four broad groups of institutions households distribution channels factor markets and government and the dynamic issues of volatility long term economic growth and short term adjustment stresses an increase in the price of something a household sells labour good service increases its welfare thus the paper first explores the likely effects of trade liberalisation on the prices of goods and services taking into account the distribution sector also critical is whether trade reform creates or destroys markets trade reform is also likely to affects factor prices of which the wages of the unskilled is the most important for poverty purposes if reform boosts the demand for labour intensive products it boosts the demand for labour and wages and or employment will increase however not all developing countries are relatively abundant in unskilled labour and trade can boost demand for semi skilled rather than unskilled labour hence poverty alleviation is not guaranteed trade reform can affect tariff revenue but much less frequently and adversely than is popularly imagined even if it does it is a political decision not a law of nature that the poor should suffer the resulting new taxes or cuts in government expenditure opening up the economy can reduce risk and variability because world markets are usually more stable than domestic ones but sometimes it will increase them because stabilisation schemes are undermined or because residents switch to riskier activities the non poor can generally tide themselves over adjustment shocks from a liberalisation so public policy should focus on whether the initially poor and near temporary setbacks the key to sustained poverty alleviation is economic growth there is little reason to fear that growth will not boost the incomes of the poor similarly while the argument that openness stimulates long run growth has still not been completely proven there is every presumption that it will

modelling labour market adjustment to trade liberalisation in an industrialising economy this paper investigates labour market responses to trade liberalisation in an industrialising country short and long run responses of employment and wages are examined using a specific factor trade model which underpins the empirical work employment and wage equations are estimated using dynamic panel techniques for importable and exportable sectors in mauritius and for a period covering both the pre and post liberalisation regimes the empirical testing finds some support for the theoretical predictions of differential responses between sectors increases in female participation however appear to have dampened the adjustment burdens of liberalisation on importables there is relatively little evidence available about the effects of trade induced shifts in the composition of demand on inter industry employment and wage levels in developing countries analyses of the factor content of imports and exports suggest that a shift from import substitution is to export promotion ep policies will typically in the case of a developing country expand the more labour intensive industries increase labour demand overall and drive up real wages in the long run but trade liberalisation and increased foreign competition may not only affect the composition of the tradeables goods sector i e the distribution between importables and exportables they may also affect both the efficiency with which all firms use factors including labour and the distribution of output within a sector between more and less efficient firms thus the net long run effects of trade liberalisation on employment will depend upon the balance of structural and efficiency effects which cannot be identified from analyses of the composition of trade alone further we must also recognise that the short and long run effects of trade liberalisation on employment and wages may diverge the divergence depending on the degree of factor mobility and the competitiveness of labour markets the aim of this paper is to model labour market adjustment to trade liberalisation in an industrialisingz country it will do so using panel data evidence for mauritius an economy that has undergone significant trade liberalisation and transformation during the 1980s indeed mauritius is viewed simultaneously as a successful liberaliser and an economy with extensive government intervention in the labour market it provides a valuable test base

protectionist policies as the regulation of international industry the political feasibility of protectionist policies that regulate international industry derives from the absence of overt collusion among domestic import competing producers the regulation of international industry cannot be explicit since governments would thereby be perceived to be approving or instigating international collusion hence voluntary export restraints have been popularly presented with a focus on the difficulties confronted by domestic import competing producers and a de emphasis on the mutual gains to domestic and foreign producers from monitoring by a foreign government of a restrictive export cartel arrangement similarly trigger price mechanisms have popularly been explained in terms of the need for anti dumping measures to preserve fair competition likewise the involuntary export tax derived in the first instance from an administratively validated but as demonstrated by kalt s econometric analysis contentious complaint of unfair foreign competition voluntary export restraints trigger price mechanisms and involuntary export taxes are however protectionist devices the beneficiaries of which can transcend national jurisdictions and which have in common the characteristic that the gains to domestic industry interests derive from the regulation of foreign competitors

on pareto improving voluntary export restraints abstract this paper develops the argument that binding voluntary export restraints vers may raise the profits of all firms and the welfare of all trading partners this possibility is shown to arise in a model of cournot oligopoly and is consistent with the theory of the second best vers benefit unconstrained firms if the favorable effect due to the increase in domestic import price outweighs the adverse effect due to a loss in market share then vers will also benefit constrained firms vers will improve the importing country s welfare if they raise the profits of domestic firms more than they reduce domestic consumer surplus the paper synthesizes these findings and derives conditions for vers to be pareto improving

strategic trade policy when firms can invest abroad when are tariffs and quotas equivalent abstract this paper investigates the equivalence of tariffs and quotas when the market in question is imperfectly competitive and open to direct foreign investment the absence of a foreign supply response under a quota so critical to the analysis of the differential impact of tariffs and quotas under imperfect competition is called into question by the potential occurence of direct foreign investment the paper proves the equivalence of optimal tariffs and quotas when the markets are oligopolistic and open to direct foreign investment

welfare maximizing and revenue maximizing tariffs with a few domestic firms in this paper we compare the orthodox optimal tariff formula with the appropriate welfare maximizing tariff when there are a few producing or importing firms the welfare maximizing tariff can be very low voire negative in some cases while in others it can even exceed the maximum revenue tariff the relationship between the welfare maximizing tariff and the number of firms need not be monotonically increasing because the tariff is not strictly used to internalize terms of trade externality it is also used to manipulate cost asym metries between producing and importing firms welfare maximizing specific tariffs are never worse than their ad valorem counterparts jel classification f13 l13

quantitative restrictions and tariffs with endogenous firm behavior abstract this paper considers a foreign oligopoly which dominates an importing country s market with its exports of differentiated products it constructs a model where firm behavior is endogenously determined in an infinitely repeated game and it analyzes the impact of trade policies on market conduct and welfare optimal tariffs optimal quotas and optimal tariff quotas are characterized and compared one result is that quotas can enhance competition and increase welfare another result is that quotas can be superior to tariffs finally optimal tariff quotas are welfare superior to either tariffs or quotas alone

on the stability of multimarket collusion in price setting supergames abstract in this paper we examine how trade liberalization affects collusive stability in the context of multimarket interactions the model we consider is a segmented markets duopoly with differentiated goods in which price setting firms pool their incentive constraints across markets to sustain their most collusive outcome we find that when goods are very close substitutes and trade costs are sufficiently high a marginal reduction in trade costs facilitates collusion exactly the opposite is true if for any given degree of product substitutability trade costs are sufficiently low we also study the dependence of multimarket collusion on product differentiation

trade technology and employment in south africa abstract south africa has become increasingly integrated with the global economy since the early 1990s and particularly after the ending of apartheid however this has not been associated with increased employment and high levels of unemployment are a major economic and social problem the paper considers the impact of trade and technological change on both the level and skill composition of manufacturing employment first a chenery type decomposition analysis of employment change is carried out and then labour demand functions are estimated econometrically both trade and technology are found to have had a negative impact on employment but these are only partial explanations of the low rate of employment growth

trade restrictions as facilitating practices abstract the effect of quantitative restrictions in oligopolistic markets is shown to depend on whether imports are substitutes or complements for domestic products in the former case they have profound effects even when set at free trade levels because they impede the ability of the foreign firm to compete in the domestic market thereby acting to facilitate collusion and raise prices and profits for this reason tariffs and quotas are fundamentally non equivalent with substitute goods when goods are complements a voluntary export restriction ver at the free trade level has no effect and tariffs and quotas are equivalent

cartel stability and tariff policy abstract in this paper we investigate the effect that tariff policy has on the ability of firms to collude in oligopolistic industries we find that small tariff rates lead to an industry structure more conducive to collusive behavior while large tariff rates weaken cartels there exists a critical tariff rate which has no effect on the cartel s stability this critical value is found to be a decreasing function of n the number of firms in the industry and n d n the proportion of firms that are domestic

the own wage elasticity of labor demand a meta regression analysis firms labor demand responses to wage changes are of key interest in empirical research and policy analysis however despite extensive research estimates of labor demand elasticities remain subject to considerable heterogeneity in this paper we conduct a comprehensive meta regression analysis to re assess the empirical literature on labor demand elasticities building on 942 elasticity estimates from 105 different studies we identify sources of variation in the absolute value of this elasticity heterogeneity due to the theoretical and empirical specification of the labor demand model different datasets used or sectors and countries considered explains more than 80 of the variation in the estimates we further find substantial evidence for the presence of publication selection bias as estimates of the own wage elasticity of labor demand are upwardly inflated

windfall profits and vertical relationships who gained in the japanese auto industry from vers this paper employs an event study to analyze the effect of the 1981 voluntary export restraint agreements on profits in the japanese automobile industry stock price movements of seven japanese automakers and sixty nine of their suppliers are examined the results indicate that the profits of japan s producers of passenger cars rose as a result of the voluntary export restraints while only some suppliers large ones and those producing specialized parts or services appear to have shared the benefits voluntary export restraints increased profits for some firms in the japanese auto industry but many suppliers did not share the windfall copyright 1993 by blackwell publishing ltd

trade liberalisation in brazil creating or exporting jobs using the growth accounting and factor content approaches this article looks at the impact of trade liberalisation on the structure and level of employment in brazil over the 1990 97 period the results support the argument that trade liberalisation in developing countries have a negative short term impact on employment relatively small in brazil s case which tends to be outweighed in the long run by a more labour intensive output mix

assessing indirect tax reform in a tourism dependent developing country summary the paper investigates the effects of reform of the current structure of indirect taxes in mauritius a relatively tourism dependent economy it uses a computable general equilibrium model to explore the relative efficiency of changing sales tax rates on tourism and nontourism related sectors and allowing for equity considerations the efficiency of tax reforms are also distinguished for cases where tourist arrivals are exogenously set and where they endogenously adjust to changes in relative prices the simulation results show that the tourism sectors are currently undertaxed additionally taxing tourism sectors is found to be the most socially efficient means of raising tax revenue

voluntary export restraints as protection policy the u s beef case there are several well known implications of international trade theory which are relevant to our study with a tariff an importing country s welfare can improve only if the excess supply curve is upward sloping under the large country assumption bhagwati has shown that a quota used by an importer can be equivalent to a tariff and mintz has contrasted features of tariffs quotas and vers empirical work has focused largely on the effects of tariffs and equivalent quotas generally exporting countries lose from such trade barriers in contrast we find that exporting countries gain and importing countries lose with a ver we also contrast the gains and losses of vers in the case of frozen boneless beef to an optimal tariff and optimal export tax the theoretical implications of vers for beef exporters were first recognized by freebairn and gruen

take or pay under japanese energy policy abstract japan has tried to increase the import of liquefied natural gas lng because of the nation s fragile energy supply structure in japan almost all lng is imported under long term contracts with a take or pay clause although buyers assume considerable risk under such a clause this paper tries to determine why the take or pay clause has been retained in lng import contracts in japan focusing on the relation between take or pay and energy security policy it is found that the government has not pursued a consistent consecutive policy on take or pay under the changing energy situation after oil crises on the one hand the government has accepted take or pay because it secures a stable supply of lng but on the other hand it has tried to scrap take or pay in order to reduce buyers risk furthermore it was not until the middle late 1990s that the government implemented deregulation it is concluded that the government s energy security policy has played an important role in keeping take or pay in japan

anti dumping and countervailing duties under oligopoly abstract this paper constructs a conjectural variations model of international oligopoly in which the home country s optimal policy responses to the foreign government s subsidies and foreign firms dumping can be calculated some theoretical support is found for tariffs that countervail part of the foreign export subsidy the optimal fraction depends on the size of own and cross effects in demand and on the extent of market competition however no normative case is found for anti dumping duties

exports foreign direct investment and employment the case of china everal theories including the vent for surplus thesis smith 1776 and myint 1958 and the staples theory innis 1930 and 1940 and chambers and gordon 1966 have addressed the role of trade in economic development the former suggests that the opening up of the economy to international trade provides an outlet for surplus productive capacity of the country and promotes economic growth the staples theory argues that the production and trade of resource intensive staple products generates linkages and promotes industrialisation these theories were employed to explain the economic development pattern of the regions of recent settlement in the past such as canada and the united states the plantation economies of malaysia and the peasant export economies of ghana and burma a feature of all these economies was their endowments of natural resources and exports of primary commodities whilst the vent for surplus explanation appears to provide an explanation of the development of natural resource based economies could it also explain the growth of a populous country with huge reservoirs of surplus labour such as china it could be argued that models which specifically address the issue of surplus labour such as the development with unlimited supplies of labour model lewis 1954 provide a much more satisfactory explanation of the development of a surplus labour economy such as china than the vent for surplus model there are though subtle differences between the two explanations these differences discussed later suggest that the vent for surplus explanation may be superior to

the closed loop motive for voluntary export restraints this paper examines the effects of voluntary export restraints in a dynamic game model of duopolistic competition it is shown that the imposition of a voluntary export restraint at the free trade level of imports increases the market price and the profits of all firms in the industry if free trade is identified as the closed loop subgame perfect cournot equilibrium of the game hence the authors conclude that the predictions of static cournot competition do not carry over to the dynamic case

oligopoly and welfare a unified presentation with applications to trade and development abstract we develop a unified sequence of models to examine the determinants of price output profitability and concentration for different kinds of oligopolistic market we relate various magnitudes of significance to judges of welfare and to policy makers such as consumer surplus profit or added benefits of employment or trade surplus to observable magnitudes such as the size and concentration of the market it emerges that various appropriately formulated herfindahl indices are useful in several of these relations we attempt to present results in a way that is useful for empirical investigations and pay particular attention to applications in trade and development

nontariff trade controls and leader follower relations in international competition a simple duopoly model is constructed in which leader follower relations arise as part of a subgame perfect equilibrium in a game of endogenous timing the author shows that in the absence of policy intervention cost asymmetries between firms can help sustain collusive hierarchical organization of markets on the basis of this model he then analyzes the effects of voluntary export restraints and import quotas in the presence of foreign and international duopolies the author s analysis reveals that in contrast to the existing literature these nontariff trade controls can break the stability of leader follower relations and thereby raise an importing country s welfare copyright 1996 by the london school of economics and political science

natural gas contracts in an emerging competitive market natural gas is being viewed by many as the fuel of the 1990s and beyond because of its environmental qualities relatively low cost and significant domestic resource base however in the fall of 1991 a group of electric utility executives met with then deputy secretary of energy henson moore and asserted that an inability to obtain long term gas contracts meant that supplies are unreliable and construction of gas fueled generating stations is being discouraged this study was requested by the deputy secretary to address the issues surrounding long term gas contracts and supply reliability the relationship between supply reliability and contracts is explained in terms of the number of buyers and sellers in a market with the appropriate state regulatory policies utilities can contract for gas and obtain reliable supplies at competitive market prices public utility commissioners are encouraged to permit utilities a free choice in signing gas contracts but to allow only competitive market prices to be reflected in allowable fuel costs

quantity restrictions and endogenous quality choice abstract in a vertical product differentiation model under cournot competition both foreign and domestic firms respond by lowering their investment in long run quality for a quantity restriction at and in the neighborhood of the free trade import level average quality increases only when the low quality foreign firm faces a substantially restrictive quota voluntary export restraint the change in quality depends on whether the foreign firm is of high or low quality and upon the restrictiveness of the quota the imposition of quantity restrictions has important strategic effects on the long run choice of quality

tariffs and quotas retaliation and negotiation with two instruments of protection abstract this paper examines the equilibrium level of trade barriers in a two country world when both tariffs and quotas are available as instruments of protection it is shown that the set of efficient equilibria is the same when either tariffs or quotas but not both may be negotiated furthermore it is shown that a trade eliminating quota war will not occur unless bargaining over tariffs is inefficient

more on the non equivalence of voluntary export restraints abstract this note demonstrates that vers limiting exporters to a percentage of the domestic market are not equivalent to other trade restrictions and that they can be inferior to equivalent import quotas even when the quota rents accrue to foreign exporters

tariffs quotas and voluntary export restraints with and without internationally mobile capital this paper presents a general framework for comparing the effects of tariffs quotas and vers voluntary export restraints both with and without international capital mobility expressions for the shadow price of foreign exchange and the shadow price of capital under each type of trade restriction are derived and it is shown that although international capital mobility raises the welfare cost of tariff protection it lowers the welfare cost of quantitative restrictions in most cases the effects of exogenous shocks in the presence of quotas are intermediate between those in the presence of tariffs and those in the presence of vers tarifs douaniers contingentements et restrictions volontaires d l exportation quand le capital est ou n est pas mobile internationalement l auteur presente un cadre general d analyse qu il utilise pour comparer les effets de tarifs douaniers de contingentements et de restrictions volontaires a l exportation dans des contextes ofu le capital est ou n est pas mobile internationalement l auteur derive le prix fictif du change etranger et le prix fictif du capital sous l un et l autre types de restrictions au commerce et montre que meme si la mobilite internationale du capital augmente le cofut en terme de bien etre de la protection tarifaire elle reduit le cofut en terme de bien etre des restrictions sur les quantites echangees dans tous les cas les effets de chocs exogenes quand des contingentements existent sont toujours dans la fourchette entre ceux qu on observe quand des tarifs douaniers existent et ceux qui prevalent quand des restrictions volontaires i l exportation existent

a welfare comparison between vers and tariffs under the gatt economic theory suggests that tariffs are welfare superior to voluntary export re straints vers in the presence of perfect competition however with imperfectly competitive markets some authors have found that vers may be welfare superior to tariffs we reconsider the comparison between a ver and a tariff in the context of gatt based constraints using a model of perfect competition we show that a ver can welfare dominate a tariff increase that is accompanied by a compensatory reduction in the tariff on another good or if the tariff is matched with a retaliatory tariff on domestic exports une comparaison des effets de bien e tre des restrictions volontaires a 1 exportation et des tarifs douaniers dans le cadre du regime du gatt la theorie economique suggere que

employment responses of skilled and unskilled workers at mexican maquiladoras the effects of external factors summary this paper compares a standard labor demand model to another augmented by the real exchange rate rer when studying the growth of dynamic mexican maquiladoras from 1990 to 2006 the basic question is whether the real value of the peso changes the responses of employment to wages and to capital in the augmented models skilled labor employment becomes very sensitive to its own wages also the user cost of capital has a larger negative impact on skilled employment and a weaker currency has a negative impact on unskilled employment only overall skilled labor benefits relatively more under globalization

short run and long run in trade models a note abstract this paper aims to capture key features of the ricardo viner rv and heckscher ohlin ho theories in a single dynamic general equilibrium framework we use a simple 2 sector 2 factor model with adjustment costs associated with the movement of capital across sectors we analyze the economy s response to exogenous changes in factor endowments and output prices our model reproduces the predictions of the rv theory in the short run moment immediately after a parameter change and the predictions of the ho model in the long run steady state implied by a new set of parameters numerical examples of transition paths are also provided

a life s work on trade and development this paper reflects on the career contributions of professor chris milner to the literature on international trade and economic development as such it not only provides an overview of a life s work but also sets the context for the nine papers which follow all of these were specially written for this special issue of the world economy and all relate to different areas that professor milner worked in

measuring the impact of trade flows on employment in the turkish manufacturing industry this paper investigates the impact of export and import flows on the change in manufacturing employment using an accounting identity based approach which enables the change in employment to be decomposed into the contribution made not only by trade but also by domestic consumption and productivity change the analysis is carried over i four subperiods two belonging to the period before 1980 when turkey switched from a regime of import substitution based growth to one of export orientation and the other two to the period after 1980 and ii three tradebased categories net exporting import competing and noncompeting sectors it is found a that trade has a more significant role to play in employment change in the post 1980 periods b that this is observed more in the net exporting and noncompeting categories rather than the import competing category and c that the switch to export oriented growth in 1980 did not lead to export based employment to be dominant in employment changes but has acted

international r d rivalry and industrial strategy this paper presents a theory of government intervention which provides an explanation for industrial strategy policies such as r d or export subsidies in imperfectly competitive international markets domestic net welfare is improved by the capture of a greater share of the output of rent earning industries although the subsidy ridden noncooperative international equilibrium is jointly suboptimal behaviour of governments and firms is modelled as a three stage subgame perfect nash equilibrium the assumption that the government is the first player in this game allows it to influence equilibrium outcomes by altering the set of credible actions open to firms

why can mauritius export manufactures and ghana not exports of labour intensive manufactures from sub saharan africa are negligible with the exception of mauritius such exports from ghana are low relative to other sub saharan african countries and relative to what would be predicted by its factor endowment firm level data from the two countries is used to assess the reasons for this poor performance large firms those with more than 100 employees are much more likely to be in the export market than smaller firms it is shown that mauritian firms are four times more efficient than those in ghana while wages are six times higher however for large firms the productivity differential is similar but wages in mauritius are only three times those in ghana large firms in ghana cannot compete with those from mauritius due to their high wages relative to productivity this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

cleaning up while cleaning up pollution abatement interest groups and contingent trade policies this paper analyzes the political economy of environmental policy formation in a trading economy with established rules for administered protection we argue that the social costs associated with the adoption of an inefficient environmental regime are likely to be compounded by induced restrictions on trade when the effected industries are import competing the preferences of interest groups for alternative environmental regimes tend to be linked to the legal institutional setting in which trade policy is conducted under existing rules and practices in the area of administered protection there is reason to believe that interest group preferences for an inefficient approach to pollution control will be strengthened because the adoption of such a regime is more likely to lead to a concomitant increase in trade barriers

voluntary export restraints profits and quality adjustment this paper develops a model of vertical differentiation to assess the impact of output constraints on the profits and quality choices of firms subject to them a competitive environment is developed with the automobile industry in mind multiproduct oligopolists producing differentiated goods who behave as coumot competitors the results show that an output constraint will not induce constrained firms to upgrade their product line when their unconstrained competitors produce higher quality models it is also shown that an output constraint can raise the profits of constrained firms despite output increases by unconstrained firms