Not all trade restrictions are created equally

There has been great focus in the recent trade theory literature on the introduction of firm heterogeneity into trade models. This introduction has highlighted the importance of the entry/exit decision of firms in response to changes in trade barriers. However, it is typical in many of these models to use iceberg transport costs as a general form of trade barriers that can be interchangeable with ad valorem tariffs. I show that this is not always an appropriate conclusion. Specifically, I illustrate that profit for an exporter is more elastic in response to tariffs than iceberg transport costs, which affects the entry/exit decision of firms. This has implications for welfare analysis and empirical specifications.     

Your Governance or Mine?

In response to criticism directed at the resource sector's corporate governance, this paper examines the corporate governance and underlying firm characteristics of resource development stage entities (DSEs) relative to a size‐matched sample of non‐resource firms. We find that resource DSEs have different governance characteristics in the measures of board independence, chair/CEO duality and CEO cash bonuses. Furthermore, there are differences in the information environment measures of analyst following, debt levels, stock market return and stock turnover. Considering we document substantial differences in underlying firm characteristics, corporate governance differences are likely appropriate to the mining industry and should not be uniformly labelled as ‘bad’. Our results suggest that media rankings based on corporate governance scores may not accurately portray the resource sector. Overall, our results are of interest to Australian investors and regulators and contribute to a broader understanding of contextually contingent corporate governance.     

Building the Planning Consensus: The Plan of Chicago,Civic Boosterism,and Urban Reform in Chicago, 1893 to 1915

Since its publication in 1909, Daniel Burnham's Plan of Chicago has been criticized for its lack of attention to social issues and for the failure of subsequent reconstruction projects to live up to the ambition of the plan. These criticisms assume that the Plan of Chicago was insufficiently progressive, or they evaluate the Plan by reference to the successes and failures of subsequent decades of urban reconstruction in Chicago. This article argues that the key to understanding the Plan of Chicago is to place it in its historical context. Burnham's Plan of Chicago was an expression of the tradition of Chicago civic boosterism and earlier city‐building practices as much as it was of the nascent profession of city planning. Finally, while the Plan did neglect housing, poverty, and other social questions, it did possess a social vision based on civic inclusivity, rather than economic inclusivity. The Plan can be read as a reform document based on the assumption that physical environment shapes individual character and social relationships. It assumed the creation of a unified and harmonious physical city would produce a contented and productive citizenry. In short, the Plan of Chicago deployed a transformative vision in the service of conservative goals.     

Bureaucratic Decision Costs and Endogenous Agency Expertise

This article analyzes the effect of the cost that an agencymust incur to adopt a new regulation (the "enactment cost")on the agency's incentive to invest in expertise. The effectof the enactment cost on agency expertise depends on whetherthe agency would regulate if it fails to acquire additionalinformation about the regulation's effects. If an uninformedagency would regulate, increasing enactment costs increasesagency expertise; if an uninformed agency would retain the statusquo, increasing enactment costs decreases agency expertise.These results may influence the behavior of an uninformed overseer,such as a court or legislature, that can manipulate the agency'senactment costs. Such an overseer must balance its interestin influencing agency policy preferences against its interestin increasing agency expertise. The article discusses the implicationsof these results for various topics in institutional design,including judicial and executive review of agency regulations,structure-and-process theories of congressional oversight, nationalsecurity, criminal procedure, and constitutional law.