Middlemen Margins and Globalization
研究中间商凭借品牌声誉克服产品质量道德风险的理论，分析不同行业道德风险差异导致的流动性壁垒，并探讨南北贸易自由化对收入分配的影响。
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.