International trade and Institutions

Course description
The course takes a variety of applied topics which link trade and institutions to trigger research ideas and create potential topics for the PhD thesis. The course introduces seminal work and recent advancements in trade and the international organization of firms (offshoring, outsourcing, multinational production). On the institutions side the focus of the course is on contract enforcement and the protection of intellectual property rights. The interrelationship between trade and institutions and their impact on innovation and development is discussed by introducing further related literature.

Topics

  • Global Production: Firms,  Contracts, and Trade Structure
  • Trade,  Law, and Product Complexity
  • Relation-Specificity, Incomplete Contracts, and the Patterns of Trade
  • Institutional Origins of Comparative Advantage
  • Contractual Frictions and Global Sourcing
  • Intellectual Property Rights, Knowledge, and Multinational  Firm Boundaries

Prerequisites

Participation in the course requires a basic background in microeconomics.

Teaching methods
Presentation and discussion of selected core papers for each topic followed by overview of related follow-up literature. All students are expected to carefully read all required papers. By the end of the course, students should be able to confront a variety of applied topics to derive arguments for their PhD research.

Assessment methods
In-class participation  (20%), Final take-home assignment and its presentation (80%).

Bibliography

 

Primary readings:

  • Antràs, P. (2015), Global Production: Firms, Contracts and Trade Structure, Princeton University Press.
  • Antràs, P. and Helpman, E. (2008) Contractual Frictions and Global Sourcing. In Helpman, E., Marin, D., and Verdier, T., editors, The Organization of Firms in a Global Economy, chapter 1, pages 9-54. Harvard University Press.
  • Berkowitz, D., Moenius, J., and Pistor, K. (2006) Trade, Law, and Product Complexity, Review of Economics and Statistics, 88 (2): 363-373.
  • Costinot, A. (2009) On the Origins of Comparative Advantage, Journal of International Economics, 77: 255-264.
  • Kukharskyy, B. (2018) A Tale of Two Property Rights: Knowledge, Physical Assets, and Multinational Firm Boundaries, Working Paper.
  • Nunn, N. (2007) Relationship-Specificity, Incomplete Contracts and the Pattern of Trade, Quarterly Journal of Economics 122(2): 569-600.

 

Secondary readings:

  • Acemoglu, D., Antràs, P., and Helpman, E. (2007) Contracts and Technology Adoption. American Economic Review, 97(3): 916-943.
  • Anderson, J. and Marcouiller, D. (2002) Insecurity and the Pattern of Trade: An Empirical Investigation, Review of Economics and Statistics 84 (2): 345-352.
  • Antràs, P. and Chor, D. (2013), Organizing the Global Value Chain, Econometrica, 81 (6): 2127-2204.
  • Alfaro, L., Antràs, P., Chor, D., and Conconi, P. (2018). Internalizing Global Value Chains: A Firm-Level Analysis. Journal of Political Economy, forthcoming.
  • Bolatto, S., Naghavi, A., Ottaviano, G., and Zaic Kejzar K. (2018) Appropriability of Intellectual Assets and the Organization of Global Supply Chains, Working Paper.
  • Levchenko, A. (2007) Institutional Quality and International Trade, Review of Economic Studies 47 (3): 791-819.
  • Rauch, J. E. (1999) Networks versus Markets in International Trade, Journal of International Economics, 48 (1): 7-35.