Introduction. In the process of production, storage and application of a new environmentally friendly hydrocarbon fuel – naphthyl, intended for use in the Soyuz and Angara family of launch vehicles, its ingress into the water of reservoirs is not excluded, which determines the mandatory assessment of the danger of its single contamination of this environmental object. Material and methods. A sample of naphthyl rocket fuel (RG–1), CAS number 94114-58-6, with a specific density of d420 = 830.0 kg/m3 was used as an object of research. The brutta formula of naphthyl is CI2,79H24,52. It is a colorless (or slightly yellowish) oily liquid with a characteristic odor of petroleum products. It is practically insoluble in water. Results. It was found that the ecotoxicant content in water in concentration 10.0 mg/l led to a change in its transparency, the appearance of color and odor of petroleum products. The indicated naphthyl concentration is determined as a threshold for organoleptic harmfulness. During the study of the effect of the toxicant on the general sanitary regime of reservoirs, in the absence of changes in the indicators of biochemical oxygen consumption, its negative effect on nitrification processes and saprophytic microflora was revealed. The threshold concentration of the substance according to the general sanitary indicator of harmfulness is 5.0 mg/l. With a single intragastric injection to male rats, the tested xenobiotic caused a significant increase in heart rate and a change in a number of hematological parameters. The threshold for a single general toxic effect of naphthyl is 20.0 g/kg. Limitations. The identified features of naphthyl behavior must be taken into account when it once pollutes the water of reservoirs (in case of an emergency). However, the data obtained are insufficient to substantiate the hygienic standard of the compound in the water of water bodies. Conclusion. The results of the experiments indicate that a single ingress of naphthyl into the water represents an ecological and toxicological hazard, registered according to three basic signs of harmfulness, which are taken into account when justifying its maximum permissible concentration in the water of reservoirs.

We study unilateral trade liberalization in the model with variable markups. First, we show that the effect of falling per unit trade costs depends on the use of the outside good assumption: in its presence trade liberalization reduces welfare at home, and raises it otherwise. Second, we derive the optimal values of import tariffs for the large and small economies and show that in both cases protection is a desirable policy. Finally, we demonstrate that compared to the models with constant markups, variable markups in our setting result in negative pro-competitive effects, reducing gains from trade.

The lowest-observed-adverse-effect and no-observed-adverse-effect concentrations of sarin were determined in soils typical to Canada and Russia. Maximum acceptable concentrations were established to be 3.0 × 10−4 mg kg−1 for the standard reference soil, 2.0 × 10−3 mg kg−1 for prairie soil, and 1.0 × 10−2 mg kg−1 for forest soil.

We build a tractable partial equilibrium model in the spirit of Melitz (2003) to help understand the role of trade preferences given to developing countries, as well as the efficacy of various subsidy policies. The model allows for firm level heterogeneity in both demand and productivity and lets the mass of firms that enter be endogenous. Trade preferences given by one country have positive spillovers on exports to others in this model. Preferences given by the EU to Bangladesh in an industry raise profits, resulting in entry, and some of these firms also export to the US. In contrast, simple competitive models would predict a fall in exports to the US. Such spillovers are shown to be large when exports are not constrained by quotas, suggesting that unilateral preferences given to developing countries might be more efficacious than expected in promoting their exports.The parameters of the model are estimated using cross sectional customs data on Bangladeshi exports of apparel to the US and EU. Counterfactual experiments regarding the effects of reducing costs, both fixed and marginal, or of trade preferences (with distortionary Rules of Origin) offered by an importing country are performed. The counterfactuals show that reducing fixed costs at various levels has very different effects and suggest that such reductions are more effective in promoting exports when applied at later stages when firms are more committed to production. A subsidy of 1.5 million dollars to industry entry costs raises exports by only 40 cents for every dollar spent, but when applied to fixed costs of production, it raises exports by $25 per dollar spent. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

In this paper we present a version of the Melitz (2003) model for the case of a small economy and summarize its key relationships with the aid of a simple figure. We then use this figure to provide an intuitive analysis of the implications of asymmetric changes in trade barriers and show that a decline in import costs always benefits the liberalizing country. This stands in contrast to variants of the Melitz model with a freely traded (outside) sector, such as Demidova (2008) and Melitz and Ottaviano (2008), where the country that reduces importing trade costs experiences a decline in welfare.

This paper provides a new heterogeneous firm model for trade where firms differ in their productivity and experience different market demand shocks. The model incorporates the variations in trade policy, trade preferences, and the rules of origin needed to obtain them that are faced by Bangladeshi garment exporters to the US and EU. We estimate firm's productivity using an extension of the Olley Pakes procedure that accounts for the biases arising from both demand shocks and productivity being unobserved. Predictions of the model are then tested non-parametrically and are shown to be supported empirically.

There is little work on the inner workings of journals. What factors seem to affect the ability to publish in a journal? Could simple rules (which are already used by some journals) like the desk rejection of a significant minority of papers, help to streamline the process? At what cost? How well do journals seem to do in choosing papers? What can we say about the extent of type 1 and type 2 errors? Do editors seem to have uniform standards or are some harsher than others? We use data on submissions to the Journal of International Economics to help answer these questions.

In this appendix we solve a multi-country version of the monopolistic competition model with homogeneous …rms by Krugman (1980). Our objective is to derive relationships in the model related to the elasticity of trade and the welfare gains from an increase in the trade to GDP ratio. The main result is that these relationships are comparable to the related expressions arising from the main quantitative heterogeneous …rms models: when the models are calibrated to deliver a given change in trade from a change in taris, they also deliver the same welfare gains.

This paper shows that the result of Ju and Krishna [Ju, J., Krishna, K., 2002. Regulations, Regime Switches and Non-Monotonicity when Non-Compliance is an Option: An Application to Content Protection and Preference. Economic Letters 77, 315–321, Ju, J., Krishna, K., 2005. Firm Behavior and Market Access in a Free Trade Area with Rules of Origin. Canadian Journal of Economics 38 (1), 290–308], i.e., the non-monotonicity in the comparative statics across regimes, disappears, if exporters differ in their productivities, which provides very different predictions about the results of policy changes.

We explore the implications of models with increasing returns, endogenous variety and firm-level heterogeneity for the quantification of the gains from trade.We first focus on the impact of trade liberalization on imported variety by analyzing the experience of Costa Rica from 1986 to 1992.We find that although liberalization triggered a sizable increase in variety, the resulting welfare gains were small because of strong heterogeneity across imported goods.Upon trade liberalization, the new varieties are imported in small quantities, and hence contribute little to welfare.We then present a model with firm-level increasing returns, differentiated goods, monopolistic competition, endogenous variety and free entry to show that total variety (domestic plus imported) can either increase, decrease or remain constant with trade liberalization.More importantly, the gains from trade do not depend on what happens to total variety.In fact, we find that, conditional on the estimated elasticities of trade with respect to trade costs, models with increasing returns, endogenous variety, free or restricted entry, and firm-level heterogeneity have exactly the same implications for welfare gains from trade liberalization as traditional models.

In this appendix we solve a multi-country version of the monopolistic competition model with homogeneous …rms by Krugman (1980). Our objective is to derive relationships in the model related to the elasticity of trade and the welfare gains from an increase in the trade to GDP ratio. The main result is that these relationships are comparable to the related expressions arising from the main quantitative heterogeneous …rms models: when the models are calibrated to deliver a given

This article looks at two features of globalization, namely, productivity improvements and falling trade costs, and explores their effect on welfare in a monopolistic competition model with heterogenous firms and technological asymmetries. Contrary to received wisdom, and for reasons different from adverse terms of trade effects, it is shown that improvements in a partner's productivity must hurt us. Moreover, falling trade costs can raise welfare in the technologically advanced country while reducing it in the backward one, if technological asymmetries are large enough.

In this paper we use the monopolistic competition model with heterogeneous firms to study the effect of different policies on productivity and welfare, and provide three particular policies, which allow to reach the first best allocation in the economy. We also show that an export subsidy generates an increase in productivity, but - if policy already deals with the mark-up distortion that arises in this context (for example, through a subsidy on consumption of domestic varieties) - its effect on welfare is negative due to combination of falling variety and adverse terms of trade changes.

This paper shows that the results of Venables (1987) depend critically on the assumption that there are no fixed costs of trade.The introduction of fixed costs of exporting, while making the model more consistent with the empirical evidence, leads to the opposite conclusion that technological progress in one country cannot harm the welfare of its trading partner.However, the results can be obtained in a richer setting with heterogeneous firms.

We explore the effect of trade policy on productivity and welfare in the now standard model of firm-level heterogeneity and product differentiation with monopolistic competition. To obtain sharp results, we restrict attention to an economy that takes as given the price of imports and the demand schedules for its exports (a "small economy"). We first establish that welfare can be decomposed into four terms: productivity, terms of trade, variety and curvature, where the last is a term that captures heterogeneity across varieties. We then show how a consumption subsidy, an export tax, or an import tariff allows our small economy to deal with two distortions that we identify and thereby reach its first-best allocation. We also show that an export subsidy generates an increase in productivity, but given the negative joint effect on the other three terms (terms of trade, variety, and curvature), welfare falls. In contrast, an import tariff improves welfare in spite of the fact that productivity falls.

It is well known from Bernard, Eaton, Jensen and Kortum (2003) that exporters are more productive than …rms that sell only in the domestic market. In this context, it seems reasonable to expect that an export subsidy would generate a reallocation of resources from less to more productive …rms and thereby increase aggregate productivity. But what is the eect on welfare? We show that in a small economy with no other interventions ( i.e., no taris or consumption subsidies) such a policy indeed increases productivity but the overall eect on welfare is negative. This is due to a combination of falling variety and adverse terms of trade changes. To explore these ideas we study the eect of export subsidies and taxes, import taris, and consumption subsidies on productivity and welfare in a small economy in the presence of product dierentia- tion, monopolistic competition and …rm-level heterogeneity. We characterize the levels of these policies that allow the economy to reach the …rst best allocation, and then explore the produc- tivity and welfare eects of an export subsidy both with and without an optimal consumption subsidy.

This paper provides both empirical and theoretical evidence of the presence of positive horizontal spillover associated with foreign direct investment (FDI). Based on a newly collected firm level data of Bangladesh garment sector, this paper shows that not only are firms with foreign equity more productive, but also that the productivity improvement of these foreign firms raises the productivity of domestic firms in the same industry. This horizontal spillover effect of FDI is further explained in a theoretical model with heterogenous firms. In this model, the productivity of domestic firms depends their learning ability and the productivity of the FDI firms in the industry. In equilibrium, the productivity of FDI firms affects the productivity of domestic firms through improving the entire productivity distribution of domestic firms, and through weeding out inefficient domestic firms as market competition is toughened. Using the firm survey data, a conditional Weibull distribution of the productivity of domestic firms is estimated and the calibrated results are shown to support the model.

This paper develops a heterogeneous firm model to study the effects of trade policy, trade preferences and the rules of origin needed to obtain them (ROOs) and applies it to Bangladeshi garment exports to the US and EU. There are differences across products and export destina- tions that make for an interesting natural experiment. These differences are shown to generate differences in the composition of exporters and productivities. Data on Bangladeshi garment exporters is used to construct firm level total factor productivity estimates. Predictions of the model on the relation between the distributions of TFP of various groups of firms are tested non parametrically. We show that the facts match the predictions of the model.

In this appendix we solve the monopolistic competition model with heterogeneous …rms and free entry. Our objective is to evaluate the importance of the free entry condition (compared to a predetermined number of potential entrants as in the Chaney version of the Melitz model) in the determination of aggregate variables of the model. The main result is that the model with free entry generates outcomes that are observationally equivalent to the ones of a model with no free entry and consequently the two models generate identical welfare predictions.