Skill Acquisition, Credit Constraints, and Trade

This paper looks at the effect of credit constraints on skill acquisition when agents have heterogeneous abilities and wealth. We use a two factor general equilibrium model and assume credit markets are absent. We explore the effects of trade on factor earnings as well as the evolution of the distribution of income in small and large economies. Our work suggests that developed countries need to ensure access to education when liberalizing trade to ensure they reap the potential gains from trade.

Return policies, market outcomes, and consumer welfare

The effect of return policies on market outcomes is studied in a model where consumers differ in their valuations of time. Product reliability is identified with defect rates. Producers first choose reliability levels and then compete in prices. For given defect rates, allowing returns makes products closer substitutes, enhancing competition and reducing prices. Being closer substitutes makes higher reliability less worthwhile, which reduces reliability. While the decrease in reliability reduces consumer welfare, the decrease in prices raises it. The latter dominates, so that aggregate consumer welfare increases with return policy.

Lucky Last? Intra-Sibling Allocation of Child Labor

This paper has two objectives. First, we construct a theoretical model which explains the empirical evidence that in developing countries, first-born children are more likely to be child laborers than later-born. Second, we explore the long-run consequences of child labor regulations within our framework. In our model, credit-constrained parents use the labor income from their first-born child to fund the schooling of later-born children. In the presence of such intra-sibling effects, child labor laws which decrease work opportunities for children may backfire, increasing child labor and reducing human capital in the long run.

Skill acquisition, credit constraints, and trade

In this paper we develop a general equilibrium model where credit constraints limit the ability of agents with heterogeneous abilities and wealth to acquire skills. We identify a new effect, the induced Rybczynski effect, that works in the opposite direction from the normal supply response and may result in relative supply being downward-sloping. We analyze the effects of trade and show that under some conditions trade may reduce welfare. Finally, we study the effects of trade on income distribution and inequality.Credit constraint Skill formation

Private labels and exports: trading variety for volume

Blanchard E, Chesnokova T, Willmann G. Private labels and exports: trading variety for volume. REVIEW OF WORLD ECONOMICS. 2017;153(3):545-572.This paper explores the role of private label trade intermediation in shaping the range and diversity of exports and imports. Whereas direct sales maintain a firm's unique product characteristics, or 'brand equity', trade through an intermediary often takes the form of 'private label' sales, under which multiple firms' output is pooled and re-sold under a new private label brand created by the intermediary. This paper shows that these private label arrangements result in greater total export and import volumes and lower average prices for consumers, but fewer independent varieties available to consumers in equilibrium. Normative implications are mixed: consumers trade variety for volume, independent exporters face greater competition from the new private label products, and intermediary firms can capture more of the gains from trade. We explore the implications of competition at the intermediary level and trade costs for the equilibrium pattern of private label and direct exporting and importing activities