@techreport{NBERw4179, title = "Complementarity and Increasing Returns in Intermediate Inputs: A Theoretical and Applied General-Equilibrium Analysis", author = "Florencio Lopez-de-Silane and James R. Markusen and Thomas F. Rutherford", institution = "National Bureau of Economic Research", type = "Working Paper", series = "Working Paper Series", number = "4179", year = "1992", month = "October", URL = "http://www.nber.org/papers/w4179", abstract = {Conventional analysis in the trade-industrial-organization literature suggests that, when a country has some market power over an imported good, some small level of protection must be welfare improving. This is essentially a terms-of-trade argument that is reinforced if the imported goods are substitutes for domestic goods produced with increasing returns to scale, goods that are initially underproduced in free-trade equilibrium. This paper notes that this result may not hold when (1) the imports are intermediates used in a domestic increasing-returns industry, and/or (2) the intermediates are complements for domestic inputs produced with increasing returns. We then demonstrate such an outcome with respect to Mexican protection against imported auto parts using an applied general-equilibrium model of the North American auto industry.}, }