Environmental and economic impacts of trade barriers: The example of China–US trade friction

The new age of trade wars could simultaneously affect the worldwide distribution pattern of the economy and environmental emissions. However, previous studies have focused on economic impacts, and on trade liberalization, while little is known about the equilibrium effects of trade barriers on the environment. Using a global computable general equilibrium model and taking the recent anti-trade policies of the Trump administration as an example, this study investigates the possible socio-economic and environmental effects of trade friction. Specifically, this study explores how the implemented six rounds of China–US trade friction and its different long-term development trends affect regional economic output, GHG and air pollutant emissions. Results show that trade barriers harm both countries’ economies and such losses have a certain permanence, while non-participants can benefit indirectly. Trade friction decreases participants’ GHG emissions, modifies global GHG emission distribution patterns, and leads to improved air quality in most countries. If governments continue to impose tariffs, global GHG emissions could counterfactually decrease by up to 5%. However, the change in trade patterns is not conducive to clean energy development in the less-developed regions, including the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, and emission reductions from trade friction are insufficient to avoid catastrophic climate change.     

Tariff rate quotas: structural and stability impacts in growing markets

This paper examines several aspects of tariff rate quotas (TRQ) as adopted during tariffication of agricultural policies under the Uruguay Round of GAIT. Quota rents and non-tariff barrier effects may remain under TRQs, contrary to the objectives of the tariffication process. Further, price stability impacts of a TRQ are more complex than those for either tariffs or quotas, and under certain circumstances TRQs may be more stabilizing than either case, since TRQs truncate domestic production distributions much like price bands policies. This complexity results from the possibility of regime switching, and may reflect behavior under either a tariff, a quota, or a combination of cases. A TRQ policy may affect the timing of import decisions based on incentives created under quota allocation procedures envisioned for this institution. It may also allow increased imports as demand growth occurs because the quota is not necessarily a binding constraint. This means the above quota tariff is the critical policy instrument. An empirical study of Philippines port: imports illustrates these issues.     

MEASURING PROTECTION: MISSION IMPOSSIBLE?

Abstract.  There seems to be some confusion between 'openness' and 'protection' measures in the international trade literature. The aim of this paper is to bring together the state of the art in quantifying trade policy measures and, for this reason, we focus on the extent of the protection granted by policies rather than on the degree of openness of the economy. Given the considerable amount of literature that deals with these issues, we will limit our review as follows. On the one hand, we focus on trade policies implemented at the border and therefore do not consider all the other possible public interventions influencing trade flows. On the other hand, we only take into account indexes that explicitly adopt a metric expressed in a 'scalar aggregate' (tariff- and quota-equivalent measures, or an index in a closed interval). We distinguish between indexes that aggregate across products (same barrier for more products) and indexes that aggregate across instruments (more barriers for the same product). Finally, in order to classify the large number of indexes covered in our review, we propose a typology based on three categories: incidence, outcome and equivalence.     

博弈理论与区域经济合作实践

将博弈论的理论方法应用到区域经济合作实践的分析中,从博弈的角度来理解全球化背景下发展起来的"新地区主义"区域贸易协定,分析区域经济合作发展过程中的矛盾现象及合作中的博弈问题,以期为讨论中国参与区域贸易协定争取政治经济利益最大化提供借鉴.     

The antebellum U.S. iron industry: Domestic production and foreign competition

This paper presents new annual estimates of U.S. production of pig iron and imports of pig iron products dating back to 1827. These estimates are used to assess the vulnerability of the antebellum iron industry to foreign competition and the role of the tariff in fostering the industry’s early development. Domestic pig iron production is found to be highly sensitive to changes in import prices. Although import price fluctuations had a much greater impact on U.S. production than changes in import duties, our estimates suggest that the tariff permitted domestic output to be about 30-40 percent larger than it would have been without protection.     

低碳规则对我国国际收支的潜在影响

我国以低端产品进入国际市场的外汇创收模式以及FDI对加工贸易的青睐,造就了国际收支顺差形成中的高碳经济因素。碳关税的全面实施会通过进出口渠道和长期资本流入渠道影响我国的国际收支。为了避免碳关税对出口和FDI的过度冲击,我国政府应大力推动贸易部门生产方式的绿色化转型;同时应实现碳关税向国内碳税的转变,并通过免费配额、出口补贴等政策措施,降低碳税对我国出口竞争力的影响。     

Disagreement points in trade negotiations

This paper analyzes trade negotiations between two large countries in the framework of an alternating-offer bargaining model with endogenous interim disagreement actions. Despite of the flexibility in disagreement tariff selection, the countries would keep the status quo tariffs in disagreement periods as far as the country which benefits from keeping the status quo tariffs compensates for the other country’s foregone gains from deviating in disagreement actions. Each equilibrium outcome converges to a corresponding Nash bargaining solution whose disagreement point reflects the status quo tariff rates as well as the threat of raising the tariff to the Nash tariff rate.     

Protection of trade for innovation: the roles of Northern and Southern Tariffs

Using a North–South trade model with innovation and imitation, we investigate the interaction of intellectual property rights (IPR) protection and trade protection. We show that unlike a Southern tariff, a Northern tariff supplements IPR protection and is not necessarily a beggar-thy-neighbor policy. The globally optimal Northern tariff increases as IPR protection in the North or the South decreases. Global welfare may rise as Northern tariff increases, but necessarily declines as Southern tariff increases. This suggests that pushing for freer trade in the South is more urgent than in the North in innovation-intensive sectors where IPR protections are weak in both regions.     

关税冲击与中国进口行为

在美国频繁发起贸易保护措施的背景下,中国加征反制关税予以还击。本文基于2017年1月至2020年6月中国海关月度贸易数据,采用双重差分模型考察了对美反制关税的实际效果,即是否抑制美国对华产品输出以及对中国总进口和产业链的影响。研究表明:(1)中国对美反制关税精准有力,中国自美进口额和进口数量显著下降;随着关税排除清单的实施,进口下降幅度有所减缓。(2)反制关税的影响总体可控。随着中国不断调低MFN关税税率,对美进口贸易转移至经济规模较大的贸易伙伴国,中国总进口以及国内产业链并未受到明显冲击。(3)尽管富有弹性产品、非燃料初级产品及高技术产品对美进口,以及民营企业对美进口均受到一定冲击,但这些产品和企业的总进口并未受到波及,总体外贸形势依然稳中向好。     

Review: Consumption-stage food waste reduction interventions – What works and how to design better interventions

Food waste prevention has become an issue of international concern, with Sustainable Development Goal 12.3 aiming to halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels by 2030. However there is no review that has considered the effectiveness of interventions aimed at preventing food waste in the consumption stages of the food system. This significant gap, if filled, could help support those working to reduce food waste in the developed world, providing knowledge of what interventions are specifically effective at preventing food waste.This paper fills this gap, identifying and summarizing food-waste prevention interventions at the consumption/consumer stage of the supply chain via a rapid review of global academic literature from 2006 to 2017.We identify 17 applied interventions that claim to have achieved food waste reductions. Of these, 13 quantified food waste reductions. Interventions that changed the size or type of plates were shown to be effective (up to 57% food waste reduction) in hospitality environments. Changing nutritional guidelines in schools were reported to reduce vegetable waste by up to 28%, indicating that healthy diets can be part of food waste reduction strategies. Information campaigns were also shown to be effective with up to 28% food waste reduction in a small sample size intervention.Cooking classes, fridge cameras, food sharing apps, advertising and information sharing were all reported as being effective but with little or no robust evidence provided. This is worrying as all these methods are now being proposed as approaches to reduce food waste and, except for a few studies, there is no reproducible quantified evidence to assure credibility or success. To strengthen current results, a greater number of longitudinal and larger sample size intervention studies are required. To inform future intervention studies, this paper proposes a standardised guideline, which consists of: (1) intervention design; (2) monitoring and measurement; (3) moderation and mediation; (4) reporting; (5) systemic effects.Given the importance of food-waste reduction, the findings of this review highlight a significant evidence gap, meaning that it is difficult to make evidence-based decisions to prevent or reduce consumption-stage food waste in a cost-effective manner.