Priolo, Anthony2020-10-262020-10-262020-08https://hdl.handle.net/11299/216843University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. 2020. Major: Economics. Advisors: Timothy Kehoe, Manuel Amador. 1 computer file (PDF); 75 pages.This dissertation consists of three chapters. In the first chapter, I study how openness to trade and multinational production affect aggregate growth. To explore links among R&D, multinational production, and trade, I build a dynamic general equilibrium growth model with international technology competition. I then calibrate this model to match several aggregate moments of the US economy and consider several counterfactual exercises. I find that, in complete autarky, US TFP growth per year would be less than half of the average annualized growth rate I observe in the data. However, allowing for either trade or multinational production alone brings the long-run growth rate of TFP predicted by the model much closer to the observed data. Together, these exercises suggest that international technology competition is important for long-run growth of TFP in the United States. In the second chapter of this dissertation, I analyze the optimal compound tariff in a two-country version of the Melitz (2003) model. I restrict the available instruments to a uniform compound tariff and find that the optimal compound tariff employs a positive mix of specific and ad valorem tariffs. Importantly, the use of a positive specific tariff discriminates against high productivity, low price producers in favor of low productivity, high price producers. In contrast, when I consider a representative firm with no fixed trade costs a la Krugman (1980), the optimal compound tariff is simply an ad valorem tariff. Finally, in the third chapter of this dissertation, I review several strands of the literature related to the second chapter of this dissertation. The main conclusion of my review is that much of the existing literature both in international economics and public economics suggests that ad valorem tax instruments welfare dominate unit tax instruments, especially in cases of foreign market power.enThesis or Dissertation