Carolyn L. Evans

The Economic Significance of National Border Effects

To address the economic significance of national border effects, this paper provides evidence on two fundamental questions: (1) Do large border effects arise because of high perceived-price wedges between foreign and domestic products, or because imports and domestic goods are very close substitutes?; and (2) If price wedges are important, do they reflect distortionary barriers to trade or do they arise from nondistortionary factors, such as differences in transactions costs or product characteristics? I conclude that, while border effects may imply barriers, welfare costs, and a role for policy, distortions are probably not as substantial as initial border results suggested. (JEL F1)

Distance, Time, and Specialization: Lean Retailing in General Equilibrium

Transport time increases with distance traveled, and time is valuable. We show the implications of these facts for global specialization and trade: products where timely delivery is important will be produced near the source of final demand, where wages will be higher as a result. In the model, timely delivery is important because it allows retailers to respond to final demand fluctuations without holding costly inventories, and timely delivery is possible only from nearby locations. Using a unique dataset that allows us to measure the retail demand for timely delivery, we show that the sources of U.S. apparel imports have shifted in the way predicted by the model, with products for which timeliness matters increasingly imported from nearby countries.

Electoral systems and protectionism: an industry-level analysis

Our paper advances the previous literature on the relationship between electoral systems and trade protection in several ways. First, our paper is the first to incorporate disaggregated, productlevel data in a crosscountry study. We find that prior crosscountry results, based on national average tariffs, mask a great deal of underlying industrylevel variation. Second, we introduce an innovative proxy for geographic concentration of ownership that varies both by industry and by country. We find that geographic concentration helps to explain the industry heterogeneity. Greater geographic concentration is linked to higher average tariffs, a finding consistent with the theoretical model.