The welfare implications of trade liberalization between the Southern Mediterranean and the EU

The impact on the Southern Mediterranean Countries (SMC) of the current process of trade liberalization with the European Union is explored. The methodology is that of computable general equilibrium modelling under imperfect competition and the model includes ten countries and 11 sectors. This allows for both a cross-country and cross-sectoral analysis of the results. The experiments considered are the full liberalization of tariffs, as well as changes in market access and trade-induced changes in productivity. A key feature of the paper is that the phased introduction of tariff reductions is allowed for as explicitly envisaged in the Agreements. The results show that the process of liberalization may have a substantial, though non-monotonic, impact on the SMC economies in terms of both changes in production and through this on welfare. The welfare impact is potentially very high in particular for the high tariff economies. The sources of the welfare gain tend to derive from perfectly competitive explanations of trade for the high tariff economies, and from imperfectly competitive explanations of trade for the low tariff economies.     

Tariff Reductions in the Presence of Foreign Direct Investment

This paper argues that the welfare effects of trade liberalization in the presence of foreign direct investment obtained under perfect competition cannot be extended to imperfectly competitive markets. In the Heckscher-Ohlin model, trade liberalization may be paradoxically immiserizing when the traditional welfare-increasing result is corrected for the change in foreign capital revenue. Under imperfect competition this cannot occur, except under rather implausible assumptions. Indeed, a tariff reduction is expected to increase welfare when the welfare indicator is corrected for the presence of foreign capital, regardless of the type of market structure and the form of competitive rivalry.     

Liberalizing Services Trade In APEC: A General Equilibrium Analysis with Imperfect Competition

The paper studies services-sector trade liberalization in the Asia–Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) Forum using a global, multicountry, multisector applied general equilibrium model with an imperfectly competitive service sector. Reducing the service sector's nontariff barriers is modeled by eliminating the possibility for oligopolistic firms to price-discriminate between client countries within APEC and lowering the fixed costs of the firms doing service exporting business. The results suggest that services trade liberalization reinforces existing sectoral trade balances. Increase in demand for intermediate services tends to reinforce rather than counteract the role of primary factors in determining sectoral comparative advantage. The western APEC members received the greatest welfare gains from services trade liberalization, while the developing economies gained more if only tariffs were eliminated.     

Regulation, market structure and service trade liberalization

In this paper, we develop a theoretical method to quantify the importance of regulation and market structure on the success of service trade liberalization. For this purpose, we incorporate a single imperfectly competitive service sector that can take on various market structures into a standard computational general equilibrium model. We apply our framework to analyze the impact of partial telecom liberalization in Tunisia. We show that if the regulatory environment guarantees competition, Tunisia's welfare can improve up to 0.65%. If a cartel is formed between the domestic incumbent and foreign entrant, however, Tunisia's welfare can drop up to 0.25%. Our results thus call for Tunisia among other developing countries to step up its pro-competitive regulatory reforms while liberalizing its telecom sector.     

Trade Liberalization and Environmental Regulation on International Transportation

Incorporating pollution emissions from international transportation into a model of strategic trade and environmental policies, we investigate the effect of trade liberalization and environmental regulation on national welfare and the environment. Our model includes imperfectly competitive markets for international transportation and final products. We find that trade liberalization may reduce each country's welfare unless some level of environmental regulation on international transportation is in place. When international trade is liberalized initially, a mutual increase in the common emission tax rates may improve each country's welfare. However, when international trade is highly protected initially, imposing an emission tax may reduce welfare.     

The effects of labour unions on international capital tax competition

Abstract We analyze the impact of labour market rigidities on tax competition between two imperfectly integrated countries. Following a shift from a competitive to a unionized labour market in both countries, the capital tax can be adjusted upward in the country with the less rigid labour market, whereas the capital tax is always adjusted downward in the other country. Moreover, by reducing the labour cost differential between countries, trade liberalization gives rise to tax and welfare convergences. Finally, when a country adopts a flexible labour market, the unionized country may attract the majority of capital.     

Trade liberalization in environmental goods

Trade negotiations have started to pay attention to liberalization in environmental goods (EGs), whose production may require dirty intermediate goods. We construct a two-country trade model to explore the effects of trade liberalization in EGs on the local pollution, the global environment and welfare in the presence of such an environmental conundrum. We find that countries do not necessarily benefit from trade liberalization in EGs in the absence of an environmental policy. With the assistance of an upstream pollution tax, trade liberalization in EGs improves each country's welfare. This result holds independent of whether the upstream market is competitive or not, or whether we have upstream trade across countries. For asymmetric countries, trade liberalization in EGs improves the world welfare and the welfare for the country if it has a smaller demand for EGs; or experiences less damage from the production of dirty inputs; or values environment improvement more.     

PROFIT SHIFTING AND TRADE AGREEMENTS IN IMPERFECTLY COMPETITIVE MARKETS*

Do new rationales for trade agreements arise once imperfectly competitive markets are allowed? We consider several trade models that feature imperfectly competitive markets and argue that the basic rationale for a trade agreement is, in fact, the same rationale that arises in perfectly competitive markets. In all of the models that we consider, and whether or not governments have political–economic objectives, the only rationale for a trade agreement is to remedy the inefficient terms‐of‐trade‐driven restrictions in trade volume. We also show that the principles of reciprocity and nondiscrimination continue to be efficiency enhancing in these settings.     

North–South Trade Liberalization and Economic Welfare

We consider a general equilibrium model of a developing economy (the South) that opens to trade with a developed economy (the North). The southern economy is characterized by open urban unemployment and rural–urban migration, a competitive agricultural sector and a monopolistically competitive manufacturing sector. Hence, there is potential for both inter‐ and intra‐industry trade to arise on liberalization, in addition to distortionary effects of duality. Southern comparative advantage in agriculture may arise from the labor market distortion and the basis for intra‐industry trade is love for variety. We characterize various configurations of the trade pattern, and the resulting welfare consequences of opening to trade in this context. We illustrate a new mechanism under which in some circumstances it may be possible for trade liberalization to lower economic welfare in the South.     

The Effects of Trade Liberalization between Heterogeneous Countries on Endogenous Mergers

This paper examines the effects of trade liberalization on merger behavior. We endogenize merger choice among owners in an oligopolistic industry in asymmetric countries to analyze the consequences of trade cost reductions on competitiveness and welfare. In this context, the non‐cooperative game supports asymmetric market structures. We also find that trade liberalization is not necessarily pro‐competitive in countries with the competitive advantage, even if trade costs are completely abolished. Moreover, the tariff‐jumping explanation of international mergers does not necessarily apply. The welfare analysis shows that merger behavior can significantly alter any gains from liberalization. Countries should consider enforcing competition in regional agreements. Specifically, to avoid a reduction in domestic welfare following trade‐liberalizing reductions in trade costs, a high‐cost country's optimal policy may be to ban international mergers.     

Environmental policy instruments and imperfectly competitive international trade

Policy makers, industrialists and environmentalists express concern that the imposition of tough environmental policies in some countries displaces production, and hence pollution, to countries which impose less tough environmental policies. Yet empirical studies of such impacts suggest they are small. However, these findings are derived from models in which international trade is modelled as being perfectly competitive. In this paper I model trade as imperfectly competitive with scope for strategic behavior by producers, in this case investment in capital. I show that the choice of environmental policy instrument can have a marked impact on the incentives for producers to act strategically, with environmental standards significantly reducing the incentives for strategic overinvestment relative to environmental taxes or no environmental policy at all. Whether welfare is higher using standards or taxes depends on whether producing countries are also significant consumers of the polluting product, and on whether all producing governments act to reduce emissions or only some subset of governments. To assess the quantitative significance of these theoretical results I conduct policy simulations on a calibrated model of the world fertilizer industry. These simulations show that the impact of environmental policy on strategic behaviour can be large.     

Some Economics of Integrated and Segmented Markets

For the purposes of the discussion in this paper, whether markets are integrated or segmented is endogenous and is determined by the interaction of demand parameters, tariffs, transportation costs, and arbitrage. Given certain restrictions, it is shown, in equilibrium, that policymakers choose tariffs to segment markets. The effects of trade liberalization (reducing all tariffs to zero) in an endogenous market structure framework are determined and compared to the existing literature. The results differ substantially, highlighting the importance of explicit modeling of costly arbitrage in imperfectly competitive models.     

Regional versus Multilateral Trade Liberalization,Environmental Taxation,and Welfare

The paper considers trade between identical countries with imperfectly competitive markets, and compares the impacts of regional and multilateral tariff reduction on strategic environmental taxation and welfare. While both forms of trade liberalization increase production and consumption in tariff‐reducing countries, regionalism also reduces production in a non‐participating country and may decrease its consumption. Consequently, regionalism and multilateralism change pollution tax and welfare in the tariff‐reducing countries in similar ways when pollution is local, but in dissimilar ways for global pollution. When pollution is global, regionalism is likely to be preferred to multilateralism for the establishment of free trade among countries.     

Comparison of deep integration in the Melitz,Krugman and Armington models: The case of The Philippines in RCEP

We estimate the welfare effects of a modern mega-preferential trade agreement--the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership--with three versions of market structure: (i) perfect competition, Armington style; (ii) monopolistic competition based on Krugman (1980); and (iii) monopolistic competition in the style of Melitz (2003). We develop a new numerical model of foreign direct investment (FDI) with heterogeneous firms and extension of the Krugman model that allows small countries to impact the number of varieties. We hold both the trade and FDI responses constant across the three market structures. We find that in all three market structures, there are substantial gains from deep integration, but virtually no gains from preferential tariff reduction. Both our Krugman and Melitz style models produce significantly larger welfare gains than the Armington structure, especially if third countries benefit at least partially from the deep integration reforms via either spillovers or wider liberalization.     

How deep is your love? A quantitative spatial analysis of the transatlantic trade partnership

This paper explores the quantitative effects of trade liberalization envisioned in a transatlantic trade and investment partnership (TTIP) between the United States and the European Union. We use a quantitative trade model that, in contrast to other works, features consumptive and productive uses of land and we allow for labor mobility and a spatial equilibrium. Our calibration draws mainly on the world input–output database (WIOD). The eventual outcome of the negotiations is uncertain. Tariffs in E.U.–U.S. trade are already very low, however, so that an agreement will have a major impact only by eliminating nontariff barriers. These are extremely hard to quantify. We address these uncertainties by considering a corridor of trade‐liberalization paths and by providing numerous robustness checks. Even with ambitious liberalization, real income gains within a TTIP are in the range of up to 0.46 percent for most countries. The effect on outside countries is typically negative, yet even smaller. Taking land into account scales down the welfare effects strongly. Interestingly, we find that all German counties derive unambiguous welfare gains even though the model allows for negative terms‐of‐trade effects. Our analysis also implies that in order to arrive at the same welfare gains as under a TTIP, a multilateral liberalization would have to be much more ambitious for the U.S. than for the E.U.     

Heterogeneous firms,trade liberalization and agglomeration

Abstract In this study, we develop an economic model to examine agglomeration of heterogeneous firms following trade liberalization. In a closed economy, we show that high‐productivity firms are more likely to agglomerate because they benefit more from agglomeration than their low‐productivity counterparts. However, trade liberalization, especially with a high‐productivity partner, favours partial agglomeration; that is, low‐productivity firms relocate away from the region where high‐productivity firms agglomerate. Consequently, the welfare gap between the domestic regions of an economy narrows following trade liberalization. The latter result suggests that trade liberalization promotes regional economic development.     

不完全金融市场、海外资产结构与国际贸易

本文在动态不确定性模型分析框架下,分析了金融自由化和金融深化对一国居民消费、资产选择和福利的影响。研究表明,两国金融市场完全性的差异会导致在金融自由化的经济环境中,金融市场完全性低的国家由于有更多的预防性储蓄而出现贸易盈余,相应金融市场完全性高的国家出现贸易赤字。同时,金融市场发展的差异也深刻影响两国居民资产组合的选择,促使金融市场完全性高的国家"做多股权,做空债权",金融市场完全性低的国家"做空股权,做多债权",并导致资本从金融市场完全性低的国家主要以购买债券的形式流向金融市场完全性高的国家。     

Market Structure and the Environmental Implications of Trade Liberalization: Russia's Accession to the World Trade Organization

We investigate the environmental impacts of Russia's World Trade Organization (WTO) accession with a computable general equilibrium model incorporating imperfectly competitive firms, foreign direct investment and endogenous productivity. WTO accession increases CO₂ emissions through technique (?), composition (+) and scale (+) effects. We consider three complementary policies to limit CO₂ emissions: cap and trade, emission intensity standards and energy efficiency standards. With imperfectly competitive firms, gains from WTO accession result with any of these policies. If we assume perfectly competitive market structures, the negative environmental impacts of WTO accession are smaller and no net gains arise when environmental regulation involves energy intensity or efficiency standards.     

Trade liberalization,firm entry,and income inequality

This paper examines the short‐ and long‐run effects of trade liberalization via tariff reductions on income inequality in an economy, which is characterized by an imperfectly competitive urban manufacturing sector and a perfectly competitive rural agricultural sector. Tariff reductions reduce domestic output in the importable urban manufacturing sector, leading to shifts of capital from the urban sector to the rural agricultural sector. This can narrow the wage gap between skilled and unskilled labor in the short run. However, the lowered capital cost attracts new firms, and subsequently excessive entry of firms, to the urban manufacturing sector. This firm entry effect can mitigate the favorable effect of tariff reductions on wage inequality in the long run. Empirical study confirms the findings.     

Technology Transfer and Merger Activities with Trade and Tariffs

In order to better understand the effects of globalization on merger incentives this paper considers a set of commonly observed mergers whereby a restructured target (with improved managerial or technical capability) continues to supply the market. In contrast to the market‐concentrating merger literature it finds that trade barriers tend to encourage mergers, including potentially welfare‐reducing, tariff‐jumping mergers. Multilateral trade liberalization, however, encourages welfare‐improving mergers. Hence, and despite the skepticism of regulatory authorities towards the existence of cost synergies as a consequence of mergers, this paper suggests that in order to assess the impact of trade liberalization under the WTO on merger incentives, and consequently on prices, quantities, and welfare, accurate information on ex ante cost differences and the transferability of managerial and technical techniques is required.