Union legislation and export platform FDI

Abstract

This paper examines Foreign Direct Investment in the presence of labour unions. An oligopoly model is developed in which identical firms locate in a host country in order to export to a foreign country. These firms are unionized and compete with foreign firms on the foreign market. We consider the incentives for social dumping via restrictive labour legislation, which we assume can be used by the host country government to affect the bargaining power of unions. We ask whether it is in the interest of the importing foreign country for the host country to relax or to tighten labour laws.     

Antidumping, signaling and cheap talk

In the United States, there is evidence that domestic non-filing firms do not always support dumping/countervailing duty investigations. Absent other factors, domestic firms have an unambiguous incentive to support petitions filed by other domestic producers. We argue that in cases where the non-complainant firm is not a significant importer or exporter, the most plausible explanation is that non-support acts as a costly signal of private information. Extending the model to allow firms to engage in cheap talk, such signaling can take place even in the absence of an investigation. This result provides an explanation for the puzzling observation that fewer antidumping investigations are filed than one would expect.     

外国对华双反调查特点、原因及对策研究

从2004年至今,外国共对我国发起42起双反调查,其中30起实施了双反措施。外国对华双反调查呈现出突然性、密集性、针对性、同时性、难应对、牵涉广、结果差、影响大的特点。我国频繁遭受双反调查的内部原因主要是我国政府存在补贴政策,而接受补贴的企业又有倾销行为;外部原因主要是外国滥用双反贸易救济措施。针对我国遭受的双反调查的特点和原因,以双反调查程序为视角,从调查前、调查中和调查后三个阶段提出我国应对双反调查的对策建议。     

WTO反倾销体制的无效性原因分析

反倾销方面的研究文献众多,但现有反倾销研究热衷于探讨为何反倾销措施大量增加方面的问题,而对价格承诺为何较少使用、反倾销体制为何不能有效阻止倾销等问题研究较少。文章把传统的倾销模型拓展到一个倾销商和进口国政府的动态博弈模型中进行分析,发现:在任何情况下倾销都是垄断出口厂商的占优策略;征收反倾销税比起自由贸易更有利于进口国福利。这对倾销现象有增无减、价格承诺比重很少、反倾销措施数量居高不下的现状提供了一个有益的理论解释,同时也揭示了现行反倾销措施对于遏制倾销的无效性。文章认为,相对于反倾销,反进口垄断更能够改善现行世贸组织体制的效率,并增进进口国福利。     

Trade Remedy Actions in NAFTA: Agriculture and Agri‐Food Industries

The economic rationale for trade remedy law, while always weak, is undermined by the formation of free trade areas. However, due to political pressure, first CUSFTA and then NAFTA have continued the use of domestic antidumping and countervailing duty laws. With the lowering of border protection, it was feared that there would be an explosion of trade remedy law as NAFTA was implemented. This article examines data on the use of anti‐dumping and countervailing duty investigations in agriculture, and analyses the incidence between NAFTA partners before and after the implementation of free trade, and compared to the incidence with other countries. Given the cost of current AD and CVD suits, options are explored for alternative methods to resolve AD and CVD suits. Evaluation of options hinges on goals held for dispute resolution within NAFTA. Given continued political opposition to eliminating AD and CVD processes, increasing the options for resolving these suits may reduce their overall costs.     

显失公允的倾销幅度裁定过程探析

倾销幅度测算是裁定倾销以及实施反倾销措施的依据和基础。将正常价值和出口价格进行比较从而确定倾销幅度的过程,看似简单,实则复杂而繁琐。测算过程中每个阶段的不同操作,都会导致完全不同的测算结果,而不同的结果又会对出口企业的利益产生重大的影响。因此,为掌握反倾销规则以实例分析了美国在进行倾销幅度测算时的具体做法。     

An Ethical and Legal Synthesis of Dumping: Growing Concerns in International Marketing

International law holds that a firm is dumping if its foreign price is either below its domestic price or below its marginal cost. Domestic firms often claim that a low-cost foreign firm is engaged in a long run strategy to destroy the domestic industry and harm domestic consumers. Dumping is a permanent feature of marketing strategies of numerous companies, and anti-dumping complaints are increasingly resorted to as a defensive instrument to stop the challengers. This article offers a synthesis of ethical and legal issues involved and relates them to marketing concerns in international operations. What is the current state of dumping legislation? What concern over personal ethics should a manager have? Using teleological and deontological philosophies of ethics the argument is made that the marketing manager who set very low prices for an international market is not behaving unethically.     

AN ANALYSIS OF THE DECISION TO FILE,THE DUMPING ESTIMATES,AND THE OUTCOME OF ANTIDUMPING PETITIONS

The goal of this article is to identify industries filing successful petitions in good times according to demand, capacity utilization, concentration, and import-penetration ratio under the U.S. antidumping procedures and using U.S. data. Good times means that the domestic industry is facing increasing consumption prior to filing. This article examines: (a) the relation between the dumping estimates and the conditions facing the petitioning industry prior to filing; (b) the relation between the dumping estimates and the outcome of the petitions; and (c) the factors affecting the probability of filing, the dumping estimates, and the probability of success of a petition. The decision to file and the probability of success of petitions are estimated using univariate probit and a bivariate probit model with sample selection. The dumping estimates are analyzed using a Tobit model. The primary metal products and the stone and concrete industries are also analyzed separately. The empirical analysis indicates that the import-penetration ratio, capacity utilization, and the dumping estimates by the Department of Commerce (DOC) are the significant factors in explaining the outcome of the petitions. The import penetration ratio, the concentration level, and the interaction of concentration and capacity utilization are the significant factors in explaining the decision to file. The analysis shows that in case of high-capacity utilization (proxy for high demand), less concentrated industries are more likely to file, but highly concentrated industries are more likely to receive protection. The results also show that the level of concentration of the petitioning industry, import-penetration, and the dumping estimates provided by the petitioning industries explain the dumping margins estimated by the DOC as the basis for the antidumping duty. This suggests that the relief or protection that the petitioning industry receives may not entirely be based on technical standards.     

Subsidy‐induced Dumping

More than two‐thirds of all anti‐subsidy investigations in the EU are paired with an anti‐dumping investigation against the same non‐EU producers. The outcome may be a two‐component duty where one duty addresses the ‘unfairness’ of the subsidy and the other the dumping behaviour. The philosophy behind this practice is that, at least to some extent, the observed dumping has been induced by the subsidy, and as the GATT Treaty, Article VI commits the claimant not to impose double remedies for the same ‘misbehaviour’, it is necessary to make an assessment of the hypothetical dumping without the subsidy. The EU quantification of the hypothetical dumping margin assumes that an export subsidy translates fully to the dumping margin, while a domestic subsidy leaves the dumping margin unchanged. Using an oligopoly model, we show in this paper that in case of an export subsidy, the EU anti‐dumping duty is lower than the predicted hypothetical dumping margin from the oligopoly model. For a domestic subsidy, the results are ambiguous, and the difference between the size of the duty following the EU procedure and the model predictions is relatively small.     

基于Granger检验的倾销与产业损害因果关系研究

倾销与产业损害间因果关系的确定是反倾销调查的重要内容之一,也是构成实施反倾销措施的必要条件之一.文章试图利用ADF检验和Granger因果检验的方法,从定量化角度和统计意义上来说明倾销与产业损害间因果关系是如何确定的,进而为倾销与产业损害因果关系的确定提供建议.     

Do What Consumers Say Matter? The Misalignment of Preferences with Unconstrained Ethical Intentions

Nearly all studies of consumers’ willingness to engage in ethical or socially responsible purchasing behavior is based on unconstrained survey response methods. In the present article we ask the question of how well does asking consumers the extent to which they care about a specific social or ethical issue relate to how they would behave in a more constrained environment where there is no socially acceptable response. The results of a comparison between traditional survey questions of “intention to purchase” and estimates of individuals willingness-to-pay for social attributes in products reveal that simple survey questions are too “noisy” to provide operationally meaningful information and overstate intentions to a considerable extent. Pat Auger is Associate Professor at the Melbourne Business School. Timothy M. Devinney is Professor and Professorial Research Fellow at the Australian Graduate School of Management.     

Do safeguard tariffs and antidumping duties open or close technology gaps?

This paper examines how the country-breadth of tariff protection can affect the technology adoption decisions of both domestic import-competing and foreign exporting firms. The contribution of the analysis is to show how firm-level technology adoption changes under tariffs of different country-breadth. I show that a country-specific tariff like an antidumping duty induces both domestic import-competing firms and foreign exporting firms to adopt a new technology earlier than they would under free trade. In contrast, a broadly-applied tariff like a safeguard can accelerate technology adoption by a domestic import-competing firm, but will slow-down technology adoption by foreign exporting firms. Because safeguard tariffs can delay the foreign firm's adoption of new technology, the worldwide welfare costs associated with using them may be larger than is generally believed.     

STRATEGIC MANDATORY LABELING OF BIOTECHNOLOGY PRODUCTS IN THE ABSENCE OF QUALITY DIFFERENCE

This article examines the strategic use of mandatory labeling of biotechnology products, such as genetically modified food. A foreign dominant firm produces a biotechnology product and foreign competitive firms produce a conventional one. It is shown that if other trade measures such as tariffs are also available, the government of an importing country may impose mandatory labeling even in the case where there is no quality difference between biotechnology and conventional products. A combination of a discriminatory tariff on the biotechnology product and mandatory labeling shifts rents from the foreign dominant firm to the domestic economy.     

Has the Byrd Amendment Affected US Imports?

The Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act (CDSOA), also known as the Byrd Amendment, allows the US government to distribute revenues from antidumping duties to domestic firms alleging harm. Prior to the amendment these revenues were not distributed to firms. In this article, we formally test the hypothesis that the Byrd Amendment effectively provides double protection to US firms to the extent that it further restricts US imports, as argued by the EU and 11 other US trading partners. Using a rich panel of 362 US manufacturing industries for the period 1998 to 2003, we find that whether or not the Byrd Amendment restricted US imports depends crucially on the level of competitiveness in the import‐competing industry. Specifically, we find that the Byrd Amendment served to restrict imports only in industries where competition is relatively weak, while the amendment is associated with an increase in imports in more competitive industries.     

A Centennial of Anti‐dumping Legislation and Implementation: Introduction and Overview

A century has passed since the Government of Canada adopted the first recorded anti‐dumping law in 1904. The Canadian legislation was soon followed by similar legislation in most of the major trading nations in the industrialised world prior to and after World War I. Anti‐dumping provisions were later incorporated into the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) following World War II. Nowadays, virtually all of the industrialised and developing countries in the world economy have adopted anti‐dumping legislation. In view of the long and increasingly widespread use of anti‐dumping measures, we marked the centennial of Canada's 1904 legislation with a symposium at the University of Michigan on 12 March, 2004. The symposium papers document the experiences with anti‐dumping and then ask whether and how anti‐dumping can be reformed. Although we all would probably agree that the best solution would be to retract all anti‐dumping legislation, this is unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future. Anti‐dumping laws serve a variety of purposes, and powerful political forces stand in the way of eliminating these laws. Anti‐dumping provides a stronger and more focused means of safeguards protection against surges of imports than GATT‐legal safeguards laws permit. Anti‐dumping also formalises a meaning for ‘unfair trade’ that, though essentially meaningless from an economic standpoint, strikes a chord in public perception. And finally, in spite of its appearance of being constrained by objective administrative rules, anti‐dumping in practice is a potent political tool that governments are able to manipulate in order to satisfy powerful constituents. With all this going for it, anti‐dumping is unlikely ever to be relinquished as an economic policy tool by governments.     

The Codes of Ethics of S&P/MIB Italian Companies: An Investigation of Their Contents and the Main Factors that Influence Their Adoption

This article introduces and discusses the initial results of a survey focused on the contents, role and effectiveness of company codes of ethics. The article examines the contents of the codes of ethics of companies operating in the private sector in Italy, quoted on the Italian Stock Exchange (Standard&Poor/Mib-Milano Indice Borsa). The purpose of this investigation was to identify any correlations between sector characteristics and the contents of the codes of ethics, which would enable us to map out the main principles followed in writing the companies’ codes of ethics. The analysis was conducted in order to ascertain whether there were common factors deriving from the shared ethical questions faced by the companies operating in the same sector of activity. As the first step, the 40 companies were subdivided into three main economic categories – Industrial, Financial and Service. Then the contents of each code of ethics were evaluated and classified in accordance with different criteria. The main categories of classification were based on – general principles, social values, rules of conduct, relationships with third parties, implementation and sanctions. The next objective was to investigate whether these characteristics were due to the regulation of the sector of reference, the existence of sector benchmarks for best practice, or simply companies’ voluntary stance on ethical issues. The main conclusions were that the codes of ethics of the Italian companies that we analysed do not seem to show relevant differences traceable to sector of activity, and their adoption is affected by several reasons other than intentionally ethical considerations.     

Some New Evidence about the Effects of U.S. Antidumping Orders and Their Administrative Reviews on the Prices of Covered Imports

The present article presents evidence from a sample of U.S. antidumping orders that are followed through as many as 15 administrative reviews. The decline in average antidumping duties over the course of successive reviews is entirely the result of firms with higher dumping duties disappearing from the review process (probably ceasing sales in the United States). For given firms surviving to be named in the next review, the antidumping duty actually increases from one review to the next. This article is the first to report direct information about the unit value of covered imports contained in administrative review reports of the United States International Trade Commission. This article is also the first to present information about the large number of firms—more than one-third of those ever assigned a firm-specific duty—that are named in administrative reviews, but not in original antidumping orders.     

美国反倾销因果关系的五种裁定方法分析

倾销同产业损害之间因果关系的存在,构成实施反倾销措施的必要条件之一。反倾销现行规则关于因果关系认定标准的宽松界定,导致具体裁定过程往往无法有效地证明因果关系的存在。本文以美国为例,分析了其在反倾销实践中使用的五种因果关系裁定方法。该五种方法均存在一定的缺陷导致因果关系的裁定失去了实际意义     

对华反补贴的最新动态、发展趋势与因应对策

反补贴已经成为我国近年来贸易摩擦的新热点。我国在连续13年成为全球遭遇反倾销调查最多的国家后,2007年和2008年又成为全球反补贴的最大目标国。本文首先从单边和多边两个层面总结了2004年以来截至2009年3月底我国遭遇反补贴的最新态势及其特征;然后结合国际宏观经济环境和反补贴的连锁效应分析了对华反补贴的未来趋势,认为,在今后几年中对华反补贴仍将在高位运行,但将逐步回落;最后从政府和企业两个层面提出了应对反补贴的对策建议。     

现阶段印度对华反倾销的实践特点及对策

反倾销是保护国内产业健康发展，维护公平贸易环境的一个重要手段。中国出口产品频遭印度反倾销制裁已成为中国对外贸易的主要议题。本文分析了现阶段印度对华反倾销的实践特点，并分析了其形成的原因。最后，分别从几个方面探讨了规避印度对华反倾销的若干对策建议。