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The Trade Restrictiveness Index (TRI) introduced by Anderson and Neary (1994 ) provided the first theoretically satisfying measure of a country's tariff structure by overcoming the problem of ad hoc specification of indexing weights and the related index number problem. We observe, however, that the TRI may not exist or may not be unique when countries are large. As a remedy, we propose a simple extension. Copyright � 2006 The Authors; Journal compilation � 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

In a standard rent-seeking contest, players optimally employ resources in an attempt to obtain the rent. Typically, it is assumed that these resources may be hired at any desired level at some exogenous per-unit cost. In practice, these resources often consist of scarce, talented individuals. We model a rent-seeking contest with scarce talent and find that talent scarcity leads to preemptive hiring by the player receiving the larger rent. This player hires all available talent and wins the contest with probability 1. This is true even when the difference in rents is small. Copyright Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2006Rent-seeking, Scarce talent, Labor market, Lobbying, Preemptive hiring,

We investigate and measure how a shift from a regime of common property to one of private ownership of fishing rights affected the safety of commercial fishing activity. To deal with overfishing and stock depletion of red snapper and grouper-tilefish in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM), various regulatory controls, most notably common quotas and seasonal closures, were introduced in the early 1990s. The resulting "fishing derbies" led to an increased number of accidents and fatalities. We show that the subsequently implemented individual fishing quota programs led to a sharp reduction in the number of fatalities, in large part because of lower pressure to make risky trip decisions, in particular under adverse weather conditions.

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