London School of Economics and Political Science

About: London School of Economics and Political Science is a education organization based out in London, United Kingdom. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Politics & Population. The organization has 8759 authors who have published 35017 publications receiving 1436302 citations.

Democratic Politics in the European Parliament

Abstract: With the European Parliament comprising politicians from many different countries, cultures, languages, national parties and institutional backgrounds, one might expect politics in the Parliament to be highly-fragmented and unpredictable. By studying more than 12,000 recorded votes between 1979 and 2004 this 2007 book establishes that the opposite is in fact true: transnational parties in the European Parliament are highly cohesive and the classic 'left-right' dimension dominates voting behaviour. Furthermore, the cohesion of parties in the European Parliament has increased as the powers of the Parliament have increased. The authors suggest that the main reason for these developments is that like-minded MEPs have incentives to form stable transnational party organizations and to use these organizations to compete over European Union policies. They suggest that this is a positive development for the future of democratic accountability in the European Union.

Market Size, Competition, and the Product Mix of Exporters

Abstract: We build a theoretical model of multi-product firms that highlights how competition across market destinations affects both a firm's exported product range and product mix. We show how tougher competition in an export market induces a firm to skew its export sales towards its best performing products. We find very strong confirmation of this competitive effect for French exporters across export market destinations. Theoretically, this within firm change in product mix driven by the trading environment has important repercussions on firm productivity. A calibrated fit to our theoretical model reveals that these productivity effects are potentially quite large.

Multi-Product Firms and Trade Liberalization

Abstract: This paper develops a general equilibrium model of international trade that features selection across …rms, products and countries. Firms’export decisions depend on a combination of …rm “productivity”and …rm-product-country “consumer tastes”, both of which are stochastic and unknown prior to the payment of a sunk cost of entry. Higher-productivity …rms export a wider range of products to a larger set of countries than lower-productivity …rms. Trade liberalization induces endogenous reallocations of resources that foster productivity growth both within and across …rms. Empirically, we …nd key implications of the model to be consistent with U.S. trade