The exchange rate and switch to the euro may be thought to have lowered tourism revenue in Greece. These effects are examined with data from 1974 to 2006 in an error correction model of optimal tourist spending that includes source country income and air travel costs. The results may be relevant for touristic countries considering competitive devaluation or a monetary union.

Financial markets exhibit an asymmetric news effect with unexpected low prices generating more price volatility than ‘news’ of high prices. The present study examines US food markets for such asymmetric news effects. Analysis of 25 years of monthly data for 45 retail food items shows that price news destabilizes about a third of the markets with unexpected price increases more destabilizing.

This paper investigates exchange rate effects on US tourism trade in structural vector autoregressive models with quarterly data for the floating exchange rate from 1973 to 2007. Tourism export revenue and import spending are examined along with the tourism trade balance. Depreciation raises the US tourism trade balance with a unit elastic effect after six quarters with no evidence of J-curve behaviour. Only export revenue is marginally sensitive to the exchange rate. Foreign travel is a luxury good for US tourists, while travel to the USA is a normal good for foreign tourists.

While Taiwan developed due to progress toward free trade, slowing growth since the 1990s has revived protectionism as trade agreements falter worldwide. The present study contributes to the ongoing debate examining the short-run income redistribution due to unilateral free trade in an applied specific factors model with 77 industries. The simulations reveal considerable declines in the returns to capital in the import competing industries relative to other industries, a moderate wage increase, and a negligible impact on the price of natural resource inputs. The short-run adjustments to immigration and foreign direct investment are also examined.