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This paper aims to shed light on two mechanisms that show how foreign productivity improvement affects domestic welfare.

First, this study applies a general equilibrium model that takes into account how wages respond to productivity improvements. Second, this study uses a monopolistic competition model that shows how benefits or losses from foreign productivity changes are distributed within domestic economy.

First of all, this study shows that a region’s productivity improvement is beneficial for the region itself as well as for its trading partner. Moreover, the study finds that productivity improvement in a developing region is beneficial for the entire economy, benefits all unskilled workers in the economy and skilled workers in the developing region and hurts those in the developing region’s trading partner.

This study contributes to the existing literature in two key aspects. First, the study applies a two-region, two-factor, one-sector general equilibrium model with flexible wages, and second, the study uses a two-region, two-factor, two-sector monopolistic competition model, relaxing the single-factor (labor) assumption, which is used in other works. Under the single-factor assumption, foreign productivity changes do not have any impact on domestic income distribution. In reality, however, any productivity change between countries creates losers and winners within each country. Hence, the author believes that it is imperative to study how benefits or losses that come from foreign productivity changes are distributed between domestic production factors.

With the use of a two-region monopolistically competitive model, the paper primarly studies how unilateral changes in a country's intra-regional and/or inter-national transport costs affect its own and its trading partner's welfare. Moreover, by considering a three-region monopolistically competitive model that consists of an external region and two integrated regions, with the one having a location advantage with respect to the external market, the paper studies how within-country asymmetries in transport costs affect trading partner's welfare.

This paper examines how investments in the infrastructure affect welfare in the home country and in its trading partner by primarily using a model with direction-specific intra-regional and inter-national trade costs. Moreover, it focuses on the within-country asymmetries in transportation costs and their impacts on trading partners' welfare.

The first model shows that a unilateral reduction in a country's transport costs is beneficial for its domestic firms, while it hurts firms located in its trading partner country. Other findings show that an equal bilateral reduction in inter-national transport costs is a Pareto improvement, since it is beneficial for both countries. The second model shows that a reduction in intra-regional transport costs benefits the two integrated regions, while it has no impact on the welfare of the external region.

Two monopolistically competitive models are considered, in order to study how investments in the infrastructure affect welfare in the home country and in its trading partner. Interestingly, the models sheds light on an important mechanism, that of firm-delocation effect.

With the rise of cryptocurrency and its influence on the financial industry, this paper aims to explore cryptocurrency affordances that lead to approach–avoidance behavioral intentions for non-users (potential) and the intention to continue use for users (actual), drawing upon affordance theory and chasm theory.

The authors collected data from 480 potential and actual users in Germany and used maximum likelihood structural equation modeling (ML-SEM) to analyze it. In particular, the data consisted of 301 cryptocurrency users in Germany\ the authors used ML-SEM to test the post-adoption model. Additionally, logistic regression was utilized to determine the dominant actual usage method (store of value or medium of exchange) for various cryptocurrency coins.

According to the study's results, the perceived value benefits have a positive impact on the behavioral intention of potential users to adopt cryptocurrency, and they influence the intention of actual users to continue using it. However, both perceived volatility and financial risk tolerance are the most crucial factors hindering cryptocurrency adoption, whether in the pre-adoption or the post-adoption stage.

This is the first study to reveal cryptocurrency affordances and examine their effect on behavioral intentions toward cryptocurrency adoption based on the differences between non-users (potential) and users (actual). Furthermore, the authors explore how cryptocurrency holders perceive and invest in different coins (e.g. NFTs), which sheds light on factors such as financial risk tolerance that affect their decision making.