International intellectual property rights: Effects on growth, welfare and income inequality

What are the effects of strengthening developing countries’ protection for intellectual property rights on economic growth and income inequality in the global economy? To analyze this question, we develop a two-country R&;D-based growth model with wealth heterogeneity. In this growth-theoretic framework, we show that strengthening patent protection in either country increases economic growth and income inequality in both countries. Furthermore, we derive the Nash equilibrium level of patent breadth and find that it is sub-optimally low relative to globally optimal patent breadth due to the positive externality effects that are captured by a spillover parameter.     

Economic geography with tariff competition

A simple two-country model of economic geography is constructed in order to examine the effect of tariff competition on the spatial distribution of manufacturing activities as well as on welfare. We show that when the transport cost is small, tariff competition with firm migration leads to a core-periphery economy, where one of the two countries imposes no tariff in Nash equilibrium. We also show that when the transport cost is sufficiently large, both countries impose a positive tariff, which decreases the welfare of both countries.     

Learning by supplying and competition threat

Review of World Economics - This study proposes a model of learning by supplying in an international outsourcing framework, where the supplier of a relationship-specific input can reverse engineer...     

Economic integration and agglomeration in a middle product economy

We examine the interactions between economic integration and employment agglomeration in a neoclassical-growth, middle-product economy. There are two vertically integrated economies, with competitive final good firms operating plants in both regions and monopolistically-competitive intermediate good firms operating each in only one region. Immobile workers are employed with traded middle products to produce the nontraded final good; mobile workers are used with immobile capital to design and produce differentiated intermediate good inputs. While agglomeration and growth need not be positively related, trade need not enhance regional growth nor widen the skilled-unskilled wage gap.     

Spatial Competition in Variety and Number of Stores

We propose location-then-variety competition for a multiproduct and multi-store oligopoly, in which the number of firms, the number of stores and their location, and the number of varieties are endogenously determined. We show that as compared to price-then-variety and quantity-then-variety competition, location-then-variety competition with multistores yields a much richer set of equilibrium outcomes, such as market segmentation, interlacing, sandwich, and enclosure.     

Quality and Quantity Competition in a Multiproduct Duopoly

This article proposes a Cournot model of two‐stage competition to examine the patterns of vertical product differentiation in a multiproduct duopoly. Firms simultaneously choose the number of products and their qualities at the first stage and compete in quantities at the second stage. We show that when the fixed setup cost of a product is high enough to result in a monopoly outcome, the monopolist always sells a single product. Moreover, in any equilibrium of a multiproduct duopoly, quality differentiation between them will develop into a nonsegmented pattern because each firm desires to avoid a strong effect of cannibalization. The set of equilibria reveals the properties of quality differentiation between multiproduct firms. In a multiproduct duopoly, the profit from a high‐quality product can be lower than that from a low‐quality product. This finding sharply contrasts with the literature on single‐product firms, which finds the high‐quality advantage.     

Price competition and quality differentiation with multiproduct firms

This paper examines a two-stage competition where firms simultaneously choose the number of products and qualities in the first stage, and then compete in prices. It is shown that a monopolist must sell a single product. In addition, in any equilibrium of multiproduct duopoly, there are segmented patterns of quality differentiation. Entangled configurations never emerge because each firm has an incentive to reduce the number of products facing direct competition with its rival. This result contrasts sharply with the equilibrium of non-segmented quality differentiation when firms compete in quantities. Furthermore, we find that the high-quality firm never offers more products than the low-quality firm, and quality differentiation between firms is greater than that within a firm.