Offshoring: General Equilibrium Effects on Wages, Production and Trade

A simple model of offshoring, which depicts offshoring as ‘shadow migration’, permits harsimonious derivation of necessary and sufficient conditions for the effects on wages, prices, production and trade. We show that offshoring requires modification of the four classic international trade theorems. We also show that offshoring is an independent source of comparative advantage and can lead to intra-industry trade in a Walrasian setting. The model is extended to allow for two-way offshoring between similar nations and to allow for monopolistic competition. We also show that, unlike trade in goods, trade in tasks typically makes all types of workers better off in both the host and home countries (with some proviso).

Trade and Growth with Heterogeneous Firms

This paper explores the impact of trade on growth when firms are heterogeneous. We find that greater openness produces anti-and pro-growth effects. The Melitz-model selection effects raises the expected cost of introducing a new variety and this tends to slow the rate of new-variety introduction and hence growth. The pro-growth effect stems from the impact that freer trade has on the marginal cost of innovating. The balance of the two effects is ambiguous with the sign depending upon the exact nature of the innovation technology and its connection to international trade in goods and ideas. We consider five special cases (these include the Grossman-Helpman, the Coe- Helpman and Rivera-Batiz-Romer models) two of which suggest that trade harms growth; the others predicting the opposite.trade and endogenous growth, heterogeneous firms, dynamic versus staticefficiency

Offshoring: General Equilibrium Effects on Wages, Production and Trade

A simple model of offshoring is used to integrate the complex gallery of results that exist in the theoretical offshoring/fragmentation literature. The paper depicts offshoring as 'shadow migration' and shows that this allows straightforward derivation of the general equilibrium effects on prices, wages, production and trade (necessary and sufficient conditions are provided). We show that offshoring requires modification of the four HO theorems, so econometricians who ignore offshoring might reject the HO theorem when a properly specified version held in the data. We also show that offshoring is an independent source of comparative advantage and can lead to intra-industry trade in a Walrasian setting.Offshoring, Shadow migration, Inter-industry trade, Intra-industry trade, Trade theorems

Trade and Growth with Heterogenous Firms

This paper explores the impact of trade on growth when firms are heterogeneous. We find that greater openness produces anti-and pro-growth effects. The Melitz-model selection effects raises the expected cost of introducing a new variety and this tends to slow the rate of new-variety introduction and hence growth. The pro-growth effect stems from the impact that freer trade has on the marginal cost of innovating. The balance of the two effects is ambiguous with the sign depending upon the exact nature of the innovation technology and its connection to international trade in goods and ideas. We consider five special cases (these include the Grossman-Helpman, the Coe-Helpman and Rivera-Batiz-Romer models) two of which suggest that trade harms growth; the others predicting the opposite.

Protection for Sale Made Easy

Formal analysis of the political economy of trade policy was substantially redirected by the appearance of Gene Grossman and Elhanan Helpman's 1994 paper, "Protection for Sale". Before that article a fairly wide range of approaches were favoured by various authors on various issues, but afterwards, the vast majority of theoretical tracts on endogenous trade policy have used the Protection for Sale framework (PFS for short) as their main vehicle. The reason, of course, is that the framework is both respectable - because its microfoundations are distinctly firmer than were those of the earlier lobbying approaches - and it is very easy to work with. Despite the popularity of the PFS framework, it appears that no one has presented a simple diagram that illustrates how the PFS frameworks and explains why it is so easy. This short note aims to remedy that ommission.protection for sale, endogenous protection

Entry and Asymmetric Lobbying: Why Governments Pick Losers

Governments frequently intervene to support domestic industries, but a surprising amount of this support goes to ailing sectors. We explain this with a lobbying model that allows for entry and sunk costs. Specifically, policy is influenced by pressure groups that incur lobbying expenses to create rents. In expanding industries, entry tends to erode such rents, but in declining industries, sunk costs rule out entry as long as the rents are not too high. This asymmetric appropriability of rents means losers lobby harder. Thus it is not that government policy picks losers, it is that losers pick government policy.Lobbying, Sunset Industries, Sunk Costs

Industrial policy: why governments pick losers

Frédéric Robert-Nicoud and Richard Baldwin explain why governments often support ailing sectors.

A Simple Model of the Juggernaut Effect of Trade Liberalisation

This paper posits a formal political economy model where the principle of reciprocity in multilateral trade talks results in the gradual elimination of tariffs. Reciprocity trade talks turn each nation's exporters into anti-protectionists at home; they lower foreign tariffs by convincing their own government to lower home tariffs. Due to the new array of political forces, each government finds it politically optimal to remove tariffs that it previously found politically optimal to impose. The one-off global tariff cut then reshapes the political economy landscape via entry and exit - reducing the size/influence of import-competing sectors and increasing that of exporters. In the next round of trade talks governments therefore find it politically optimal to cut tariffs again. The process may continue until tariffs are eliminated.Trade policy, Economic integration

Capital environnemental et recompositions socio-spatiales du périurbain : les leçons de l'expérience britannique

International audienceEnvironmental capital and social changes in accessible rural areas : lessons from the British experience Abstract : Considering that parts of what is seen as rural areas could actually belong to what French speakers describe as " espaces périurbains ", one can ask many question about demographic and social changes occurring there. The aim of the article is to link together the rural gentrification process and the concept of environmental capital concept and then to demonstrate the role of the last one in the segregation processes that hurts working class people and ethnic minorities.En considérant qu'une partie de ce qui est perçu comme l'espace rural britannique relève en réalité de l'univers francophone du périurbain, les recompositions démographiques et sociales dont il fait l'objet suscitent de nombreuses interrogations. L'article vise en l'occurrence à relire la notion de gentrification rurale à la lumière de celle de capital environnemental et à démontrer l'influence de celui-ci dans la mise en œuvre de processus ségrégatifs aux dépens des populations les plus défavorisées et des minorités ethniques