Smoothing the adjustment to trade liberalization

Empirica - We use a dynamic general equilibrium trade model with comparative advantage, heterogeneous firms, heterogeneous workers and endogenous firm entry to analyze economic policy meant to...     

Who Benefits from Trade Wars?

Even though economists keep on emphasising the benefits of international trade, protectionism is on the rise in many industrialised countries. The authors argue that a potential explanation for this phenomenon can be found in the short-run distributional effects of import tariffs: while protectionism hurts the economy from an aggregate perspective (i.e. GDP goes down), unskilled workers in import-competing sectors benefit in the short run and do not lose in the long run. They might therefore lend political support to protectionism.     

THE DYNAMIC AND DISTRIBUTIONAL ASPECTS OF IMPORT TARIFFS

We use a dynamic trade model with two sectors and two types of workers to analyze the optimal setting of income‐generating tariffs. We study dynamic and distributional aspects focusing on the time horizon of policymakers and workers. The level of tariffs preferred by workers depends on the sector where they are employed as well as their skill class, with the relative weight of both aspects determined by the time horizon of the workers. Unskilled workers in the unskilled‐intensive sector are the ones most in favor of protectionism and might even benefit from a trade war.