Middlemen Margins and Globalization

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Bardhan, Pranab; Mookherjee, Dilip; Tsumagari, Masatoshi
• 署名单位: University of California System; University of California Berkeley; Boston University; Keio University
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-MICROECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7669
• DOI: 10.1257/mic.5.4.81
• 发表日期: 2013
• 页码: 81-119
• 关键词: DEVELOPING-COUNTRIES; financial frictions; wage inequality; TRADE; BUSINESS

摘要

We study a competitive theory of middlemen with brand-name reputations necessary to overcome product quality moral hazard problems. Agents with heterogeneous abilities sort into different sectors and occupations. Middleman margins do not equalize across sectors if production of different goods are differentially prone to moral hazard, generating endogenous mobility barriers. We embed the model in a setting of North-South trade, and explore the distributive implications of trade liberalization. With large intersectoral moral hazard differences, results similar to those of Ricardo-Viner specific-factor models obtain, whereby southern inequality increases. Otherwise, opposite (i.e., Stolper-Samuelson) results obtain.