CONSUMER TARGETING UNDER QUALITY COMPETITION IN A LIBERALIZED VERTICALLY DIFFERENTIATED MARKET

This paper examines consumer targeting by cost-asymmetric home incumbent and foreign entrant under quality and price competition among them in a liberalized home-country market. With the home incumbent offering a price-quality menu before the foreign entrant offers his menu, the extent to which the home incumbent enjoys a home-market advantage over a technologically efficient foreign entrant determines the nature of market segmentation. When the home-market advantage is not too large, the home incumbent targets accommodates entry by targeting only the low-type home consumers. Gains from liberalization, however, depends to a large extent on the distribution of home consumers over different types.Consumer Targeting, Quality Competition, Liberalization, Accommodating Entry

INNOVATION UNDER THE THREAT OF DIRECT FOREIGN INVESTMENT

We examine the implication of direct and indirect foreign competition on domestic innovation decision. In most of the existing theoretical analyses the foreign firms are assumed to enter the domestic-country market as an exporter and thus are subject to a tariff duty imposed by the local government. We consider a broader setting where the foreign firm also has the option of setting up a production unit in the domestic country to supply output to the domestic country. This enables it to avoid the tariff that it faces due to export. Once we allow for such a strategy option for the foreign firm, competition becomes more direct and intense since tariffs no longer discount for the technological inferiority of home firms. We show that innovation by the home firm will be discouraged at high tariffs under the threat of DFI. Again at low tariff rates exports by the foreign firm make market competition more intense and reduce the incentive for innovation. Hence the home firm always (never) innovates at low (high) R&D cost whatever be the tariff rate. For intermediate R&D cost the home firm innovates if the foreign firm opts for exports.Innovation, Tariff, Foreign Direct Investment, Foreign Competition

On Tariff, Quality Choice and Innovation in a Vertically Differentiated Monopoly with Discrete Preferences

In a vertically differentiated monopolistic framework with discrete preferences we examine how protecting the low-quality segment raises the incentive for quality innovation. We show how the monopolist facing competitive imports, might fail to exert its complete monopoly power even if there is prohibitive tariff on both the high and low quality segment of the market. On the other hand, given non prohibitive tariff on the high quality segment, the potential gain for the monopolist exhausts at a level much below the prohibitive low-quality tariff level. Also a sufficiently low tariff on the high quality product can force the monopolist to produce the first best qualities irrespective of the tariff level on the low quality productProtection; Quality Innovation; Discrete Types; Monopoly

Parallel imports, innovations and national welfare: The role of the sizes of the income classes and national markets for health care.

This paper shows that regardless of any intra-country income differences, parallel imports result in a lower level of health-care innovation but, contrary to popular as well as conventional theoretical wisdom, a lower price in the Third World compared to market-based discrimination. Despite such a lower price, however, parallel imports unambiguously make all buyers in the Third World worse off when intra-country income disparity exists. On the other hand, even discarding the MNC's profit, there will be cases in which the richer country prefers price discrimination as well. That is, in those cases, no countries will have any incentive under the welfare criterion to undo price discrimination, contrary to Richardso

Emigration, tax on remittances and export quality

We examine implications of emigration of unskilled workers for quality of a skill-based good exported by a small open economy. This issue is relevant in the context of quality constraint faced by the developing countries like China and India, in promoting their exports, on the one hand, and significantly large emigrations of workers, particularly unskilled workers, that lower their productive capacities, on the other hand. We show that even though unskilled workers are not directly used in production of the quality-differentiated export good, their emigration would lower export quality when quality upgrading requires more intensive use of skilled workers relative to capital. This result follows from the complementarity between skilled and unskilled wages in a competitive general equilibrium model. A quality-content production subsidy in such a case can mitigate the adverse effect of emigration. Significantly large remittances received from unskilled emigrants create scope for taxing such remittances to finance the subsidy

Devaluation, Export Quality and Employment in a Small Dependent Economy

This paper investigates how devaluation by a small open economy affects its export quality when higher quality requires more of skilled labour and capital; and the ramifications of such quality changes on employment of unskilled labour and real income. In a competitive general equilibrium structure with cost of export quality determined endogenously, changes in export quality is shown to be contingent upon whether higher quality is more skill intensive or more capital intensive; but, aggregate employment of unskilled labour rises unambiguously under homothetic taste, and under reasonable conditions under non-homothetic tastes. These results qualify several robustness checks

Devaluation, Export Quality and Employment in a Small Dependent Economy

This paper investigates how devaluation by a small open economy affects its export quality when higher quality requires more of skilled labour and capital; and the ramifications of such quality changes on employment of unskilled labour and real income. In a competitive general equilibrium structure with cost of export quality determined endogenously, changes in export quality is shown to be contingent upon whether higher quality is more skill intensive or more capital intensive; but, aggregate employment of unskilled labour rises unambiguously under homothetic taste, and under reasonable conditions under non-homothetic tastes. These results qualify several robustness checks

Successive Trade Liberalization and Wage Inequality

This paper examines the implications of initial conditions in terms of the levels of tariff protection from which countries liberalize their trade regimes on the wage inequality in trading nations. The discussion is confined to the standard two-country Heckscher-Ohlin-Samuelson model to see whether there can be channels, other than those discussed in the recent literature, through which the observed phenomena can be theoretically predicted. The initial conditions are observed to matter in the sense that for countries lowering their tariff levels successively than once and for all, intra-country wage inequality may change asymmetrically at different stages of liberalization

Product Standards, Exports and Employment An Analytical Study

Through the process of globalization, trade dependence and interdependence of the developing countries have increased phenomenally than ever before. The characteristic of this late twentieth-century globalization process has been the new technological revolution that has led to a high rate of world exports of electronics and other high-technology products. This has marginalized most of the developing countries exporting largely the low quality and low value-addition manufacturing and primary products, barring a few exceptions like China, India and Mexico. The fruits of globalization have, therefore, been unevenly distributed so far across the developed and the developing countries. Moreover, whatever little growth in exports of medium technology products has been achieved by a few of them, is largely driven by outsourcing of low value-addition and lower-stage of activities by the foreign multinationals. Outsourcing of software services, rather than development of software packages, in India and assembly line for automobiles in Mexico are the two glaring examples. These activities may have boosted the total exports of these countries, but they have failed to generate any feedback effect on the rest of the economy in terms of skill formation, increase in overall productivity level and product diversification. The possibility of achieving significant export growth by the developing countries has further been constrained by the quality regulations and environmental standards that are often in place on the imports by the advanced industrialized countries. These non-tariff barriers, the new face of protectionism in the twenty-first century, has forced the developing countries to alter their production structures and technology with far reaching implications for income distribution and employment opportunities. These developments reveal a paradox of export-led growth and poverty reduction. To generate strong linkages and dynamic effects with rest of the economy, and to meet the challenges posed by the new set of regulations and standards, the developing countries must enhance their product quality and specialize in high value-addtion activities. But this raises the demand for capital, both human and physical, and displaces unskilled labour in the process. As a consequence, not only income inequality may be on the rise, as has already been observed in many parts of the developing world, but increased unemployment among the large number of unskilled workers is also on the card. All these contribute to weaken the positive impact of export growth on poverty alleviation. This book makes an analytical study of these issues. With the new technological revolution in the West and new set of non-tariff barriers forthcoming on the exports of the developing countries, the export-led development strategy has now quite a different set of requirements and implications than it had ever before. It now requires a good understanding of why developing countries are historically the producers of low-quality and dirty goods and the policy implications thereof. At the same time it is to be understood to what extent changes in the production structures brought about by the quality regulations and environmental standards displace unskilled workers who have almost no alternative employment opportunities. These are the tasks that have been set out in this book

Money, Exchange Rate and Export Quality

This paper theoretically examines the effect of an expansionary monetary policy on export quality and its ramifications on the aggregate employment of the unskilled workers in a competitive general equilibrium framework of a small open economy. This issue assumes relevance since monetary policies are often pursued by the central bank of an economy to manage exchange rate fluctuations under a managed float regime, which may have adverse consequences for export-quality choices and thereby for export growth given the growing preference of buyers in richer nations for higher qualities of goods they consume. Under optimal allocation of wealth over a portfolio of cash, domestic assets and foreign assets, we show that an increase in the domestic money supply affects the choice of export-quality primarily in two ways. One is through larger investment, capital formation and consequent endowment effect; the other is through changes in the nominal exchange rate. Under less price-elastic demand for a non-traded good, the export quality is upgraded when higher quality varieties of the export good are relatively capital intensive. On the other hand, though the expansionary monetary policy may raise the aggregate employment of unskilled workers due to its endowment effect, may lower it through changes in the quality of the export good. The overall effect is thus ambiguous. A larger initial size of bequests has a similar effect