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This hard-hitting research report presents a rigorous critique of the most widely used trade models based on computable general equilibrium (or CGE) models. The authors present concise analytical arguments explaining the fundamental weaknesses of 'typical' CGE models. They show that these models tend to make unrealistic assumptions about the macro-economy and do not allow an accurate estimation of the welfare gains that trade liberalisation is supposed to induce. The report appeals for 'honest' simulation strategies showing a variety of possible outcomes, which would enable policy-makers to assess the different scenarios for themselves.

We present the first direct spectroscopic measurement of the stellar velocity dispersion function (VDF) for massive quiescent and star-forming galaxies at $0.6 < z \leq 1.0$. For this analysis we use individual measurements of stellar velocity dispersion from high-S/N spectra from the public Large Early Galaxy Astrophysics Census (LEGA-C) survey. We report a remarkable stability of the VDF for both quiescent and star-forming galaxies within this redshift range, though we note the presence of weak evolution in the number densities of star-forming galaxies. We compare both VDFs with previous direct and inferred measurements at local and intermediate redshifts, with the caveat that previous measurements of the VDF for star-forming galaxies are poorly constrained at all epochs. We emphasize that this work is the first to directly push to low-stellar velocity dispersion ($\sigma_\star > 100$ km s$^{-1}$) and extend to star-forming galaxies. We are largely consistent with the high-sigma tail measured from BOSS, and we find that the VDF remains constant from the median redshift of LEGA-C, $z\sim0.8$, to the present day., Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ