Commercial policy and international factor mobility in the presence of monopolistic competition

Abstract This paper utilizes a well-known specification of returns to specialization (a variation of the Spence-Dixit-Stiglitz model) to explore the implications of local agglomeration effects for commercial policy and restricted factor mobility. The paper initially considers a small open economy where it is shown that a tariff reduces the degree of specialization and hence the size of the external economies to the producers. An inflow of labor increases the degree of specialization while a capital inflow decreases it. The paper then considers a two-country world where both countries are large and deals with the pattern of trade and factor mobility.