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Abstract:
We present a model of crime where two municipalities exist within a metropolitan statistical area (MSA). Consistent with the literature, local law enforcement has a crime reduction effect and a crime diversion effect. The former confers a spillover benefit to the other municipality, while the latter a spillover cost. If the net spillovers are positive (negative), then the respective Nash enforcement levels are too low (high) from the perspective of the MSA. When we allow for Tiebout type mobility, labor will move to the location offering lower disutility of crime (includ-ing the tax burden). To attract labor, both jurisdictions would like to reduce the relative crime that exists in their municipality. Interestingly, this could raise or reduce enforcement compared with the immobility case. If it was too high (low) under immobility, it will be raised (reduced) further under mobility. In the symmetric case, neither can gain any labor, but the competition for it pushes the jurisdictions further away from the efficient (cooperative) outcome. Thus, mobility is necessarily welfare reducing. We also consider asymmetry in the context of differences in efficiency of enforcement. The low cost municipality has the lower crime damage (inclusive of the tax burden) and attracts labor. Mobility is necessarily welfare reducing for the high cost municipality and for the MSA, but it has an ambiguous effect on the low cost municipality.

crime, enforcement, labor mobility

Abstract:
We present a model of crime where two municipalities exist within a metro area (MSA). Consistent with the literature, local law enforcement has a crime reduction effect and a crime diversion effect. The former confers a spillover benefit to the other municipality, while the latter a spillover cost. If the net spillovers are positive (negative), then the respective Nash enforcement levels are too low (high) from the perspective of the MSA. When we allow for Tiebout type mobility, labor will move to the location offering lower disutility crime (including the tax burden). To attract labor both jurisdictions would like to raise the relative crime that exists in the competing region. Interestingly, this could raise or reduce enforcement compared to the immobility case. If it was too high (low) under immobility, it will be raised (reduced) further under mobility. In the symmetric case, neither can gain any labor, but the competition for it pushes the jurisdictions further away from the efficient (cooperative) outcome. Thus, mobility must be welfare reducing. We also consider asymmetry in the context of differences in efficiency of enforcement. The low cost municipality has the lower crime damage (inclusive of the tax burden) and attracts labor. Mobility is necessarily welfare reducing for the high cost municipality and for the MSA, but it has an ambiguous effect on the low cost municipality.

Crime, Externalities, Enforcement, Labor Mobility

Abstract:
We present a three-nation model, where two of the nations are members of a Customs Union (CU) and maintain a common external tariff (CET) on the third (non-member) nation. The producing lobby is assumed to be union-wide and lobbies both governments to influence the CET. The CET is determined jointly by the CU. We follow the political support function approach, where the CU seeks to maximize a weighted sum of the constituents' payoff functions, the weights reflecting the influence of the respective governments in the CU. A central finding of this paper is that the CET rises monotonically with the degree of asymmetry in the weights if the two countries are equally susceptible to lobbying. If the weights are the same, but the respective governments are asymmetric in their susceptibilities to lobbying, the CET also rises monotonically with this asymmetry. However, an increase in one type of asymmetry, in the presence of the other type of asymmetry, may reduce the CET.

Asymmetry, Customs union, Common external tariff, Politics

Abstract:
This paper presents a model of legal migration of temporary skilled workers from one source country to two host countries, both of which can control their levels of such immigration. Because of complementarities between capital and labor, the return on capital is positively related to the level of immigration. Consequently, when capital is immobile, host nations' optimal levels of immigration are positively related to their capital endowments. Further, when capital is mobile between the host nations, the common return on capital is a function of the levels of immigration in both countries, meaning that immigration is a public good. As a result, when immigration imposes costs on host countries, the Nash equilibrium results in free riding and less immigration than would occur in the cooperative equilibrium. These results are qualitatively unaltered when capital mobility extends to the source nation.

Skilled Immigration, Optimal Immigration, Capital Mobility, Externalities, Public Goods, Assimilation Costs

Abstract:
A two-stage game depiction of counterterrorism is presented, where the emphasis is on the interaction between the preemptive and defensive measures taken by two targeted countries facing a common threat. The preemptor is likely to be the high-cost defender with the greater foreign interests. A prime-target country may also assume the preemptor role. The analysis identifies key factors – cost comparisons, foreign interests, targeting risks, and domestic terrorism losses – that determine counterterrorism allocations. The study shows that the market failures associated with preemptive and defensive countermeasures may be jointly ameliorated by a disadvantaged defender. Nevertheless, the subgame perfect equilibrium will still be suboptimal owing to a preemption choice that does not fully internalize the externalities.

Transnational Terrorism, Counterterrorism, Preemption, Defense, Public Goods

Abstract:
Many developing country governments rely heavily on trade tax revenue. Therefore, trade liberalization can be a potential source of significant fiscal instability, and may affect government spending on development activities. Donor nations may take this into account in making their aid allocation decisions for developing nations. Our findings suggest that bilateral donors provide substantially larger amounts of aid to compensate (or reward) liberalizing recipient nations who also face declining trade tax revenues. Interestingly, these effects are statistically insignificant in the context of multilateral aid. Multilateral donors are more focused on income per capita and may be using it as a de facto measure of average living standards in the recipient nations.

Bilateral and multilateral aid, Trade tax revenue, Trade liberalization

Abstract:
Understanding the causes of terrorism is important in predicting it and in developing an effective counterterrorism strategy. Data on the incidence of terrorist attacks and casualties suggest that domestic terrorism poses a substantially larger threat than transnational terrorism in developing countries. In spite of this fact, research has focused mostly on the latter. In analyzing both types, we find that political freedom and civil liberties affect domestic terrorism in a non monotonic way. Countries with either authoritarian regimes or with mature democratic systems experience less terrorism. This result has important policy implications: It suggests that one needs to be patient in the path to democracy, because the transition is likely to be associated with more violence. Interestingly, more religious fractionalization is associated with less terrorism in most of our specifications, while ethnic fractionalization raises domestic terrorism. On the other hand, poverty and lack of education do not appear to directly influence either domestic or transnational terrorism. All specifications show that "rule of law" reduces terrorism.

Domestic/transnational terrorism, Political freedom and civil liberties, Rule of law

Abstract:
We present a model where foreign aid bolsters proactive counterterrorism efforts of a foreign nation that is a source for transnational terrorism. Our two-stage game has the donor country choosing a first-stage contract consisting of terrorism-fighting tied aid and general assistance. In stage 2, the donor decides its defensive measures, while the recipient country chooses its proactive measures. An interesting finding is that the foreign enforcement best-response function is likely to reflect strategic substitutes, while the donor's enforcement best-response function is apt to indicate strategic complementarity. A rise in terrorism in the donor increases home enforcement but may limit foreign enforcement at given aid levels. A rich set of scenarios depends on the strategic identity of the countries' countermeasures and the recipient’s regime stability. Surprising and varied outcomes follow.

Transnational terrorism, Tied foreign aid, Untied foreign aid, Strategic substitutes, Strategic complements, Regime stability

Abstract:
We present a model with three blocks of nations: two of the blocks are members of a Customs Union (CU) and maintain a common external tariff (CET) on the third (non member). One of the member blocks is a block of new entrants. The producing lobby is assumed to be union-wide and lobbies governments of both blocks to influence the CET. The CET is determined jointly by the CU. We follow the political support function approach, where the CU seeks to maximize a weighted sum of the constituents' payoff functions. In this framework, we find the relationship between the CET and the average level of capital stock owned by the protected sector in the block of new entrants. We find that the CET is unambiguously larger if the new entrants have a larger stock of capital.

Enlargement, Customs union, Common external tariff, Politics

Abstract:
We analyze the effects of outsourcing in the presence of a minimum wage by presenting a general-equilibrium model with an oligopolistic export sector and a competitive import-competing sector. An outsourcing tax is politically popular because it switches jobs to unemployed natives. It is also economically sound because it raises national income. An export subsidy may or may not be justified on welfare grounds. Increased international competition has no effect on the level of outsourcing, but the direction of its effect on unemployment and national income depends on the relative factor intensities of the two sectors.

Abstract:
This paper provides new estimates of the effects of ethnic networks on US exports. In line with recent research, our dataset is a panel of exports from US states to 29 foreign countries. Our analysis departs from the literature in two ways, both of which show that previous estimates of the ethnic-network elasticity of trade are sensitive to the restrictions imposed on the estimated models. Our first departure is to control for unobserved heterogeneity with properly specified fixed effects, which we can do because our dataset contains a time dimension absent from previous studies. Our second departure is to remove the restriction that the network effect is the same for all ethnicities. We find that ethnic-network effects are much larger than has been estimated previously, although they are important only for a subset of countries.

Abstract:
This paper examines the effect of political asymmetries in the formation of common external tariffs (CETs) in a customs union (CU). We do so by introducing cross-border lobbying and by endogenizing tariff formation in a political economic model for the determination of CETs. The latter allows us to consider asymmetries among the member nations in their susceptibilities to lobbying. We also consider asymmetries in the influence of the member nations in the CU-wide decisionmaking. A central finding of this paper is that the CET rises monotonically with the degree of asymmetry in country influences if the two countries are equally susceptible to lobbying. If influences are the same, the CET also rises monotonically with degree of asymmetry in susceptibilities. These results hold irrespective of whether the lobby groups in the two member countries work cooperatively or noncooperatively.

Asymmetry, Customs union, Common external tariff, Politics

Abstract:
We present a general equilibrium analysis of biofuel subsidies in an open-economy context. In the small-country case, when a Pigouvian tax on conventional fuels such as crude is in place, the optimal biofuel subsidy is zero. When the tax on crude is not available as a policy option, however, a second-best biofuel subsidy (or tax) is optimal. In the large-country case, the optimal tax on crude departs from its standard Pigouvian level and a biofuel subsidy is optimal. A biofuel subsidy spurs global demand for food and confers a terms-of-trade benefit to the food-exporting nation. This might encourage the food-exporting nation to use a subsidy even if it raises global crude use. The food importer has no such incentive for subsidization. Terms-of-trade effects wash out between trading nations; hence, any policy intervention by the two trading nations that raises crude use must be jointly suboptimal.

Optimal Biofuel Subsidy, Pigouvian Tax, Terms-of-Trade, Pollution Externality

Abstract:
This paper examines the effect of cross-border lobbying on domestic lobbying and on external tariffs in both Customs Union (CU) and Free Trade Area (FTA). We do so by developing a two-stage game which endogenizes the tariff formation function in a political economic model of the directly unproductive rent-seeking activities type. We find that cross-border lobbying unambiguously increases both domestic lobbying and the equilibrium common external tariffs in a CU. The same result also holds for FTA provided tariffs for the member governments are strategic complements. We also develop a specific oligopolistic model of FTA and show that tariffs are indeed strategic complements in such a model.

free trade area, customs union, preferential trading agreements, domestic lobbying, cross-border lobbying, external tariffs

Abstract:
The paper uses a Hecksher-Ohlin-Samuelson type general equilibrium framework to consider the incidence of an outsourcing tax on an economy in which the production of a specific intermediate input has been fragmented and outsourced. When the input is “non-traded”, the outsourcing tax can reduce domestic wages even if the intermediate input producing sector is the most capital-intensive sector of the economy. This implies that contrary to received wisdom, a tax on a capital-intensive sector may actually hurt labor. On the other hand, if the intermediate input is traded, the outsourcing tax must close down the final good producing sector that uses it specifically in its production. In turn, this may force the government to look for additional policy instruments to help sustain this domestic industry.

Fragmentation, Outsourcing, Factor intensity, Tax incidence