The Optimal Penal Code vs. Infinite Nash Reversion in Trade Liberalization

This paper derives Abreu's stick-and-carrot strategy optimal penal codes ( Journal of Economic Theory , 1986, 191–225 in a partial equilibrium model that has been widely used to examine trade liberalization. Unless the asymmetry between countries is significant, the optimal penal codes take a simple form. It is also shown that the difference between the most-cooperative pairs of tariffs supported by two schemes, the optimal penal code and infinite Nash reversion, depends crucially on the size of the surplus from exports that a deviating country forgoes when the other country places an embargo, rather than the (punitive) optimum tariff, on imports in the punishment.     

Japanese Management Views on Overseas Exchange Listings: Survey Results

Although many theoretical papers support the hypothesis that overseas listings have a positive effect on stockholders' wealth, a few empirical studies cast doubts on this hypothesis. These studies suggest that the steady growth of overseas listings is motivated not only by the stockholders' wealth maximization, but also by other reasons, such as managers' utility maximization. However, information about management views on overseas listings is as yet inadequate to support or contradict this hypothesis. Following Baker and Pettit (1982) and Baker and Johnson (1990), both of which examined management's motives for domestic exchange listing, we used a questionnaire to obtain information on Japanese managers' views of their company's decision to list overseas. Our survey, mailed to the chief financial officers of 2,230 Japanese domestically-listed companies, shows that Japanese managers regard disclosure and financial reporting requirements as the primary obstacle to listing overseas. This is why many Japanese companies do not list their stocks on overseas stock exchanges despite the fact that they acknowledge the beneficial effects of overseas listings.     

WTO as Moral Support

International cooperation in trade policies under the auspices of the WTO makes countries "feel" more obliged to uphold agreements. The paper emphasizes the role of the WTO to give moral support: countries incur "psychological costs" when they renege on the agreements that are formally signed under the WTO. Using the concept of Kandori's (2003 ) "morale equilibrium," we formalize this idea and show that countries can agree on a cooperative level of the binding tariffs but they occasionally deviate from the agreement, which lowers the morale and invites further deviations in the future.     

Free trade networks

The paper examines the formation of free trade agreements (FTAs) as a network formation game. We consider an n-country model in which (possibly asymmetric) countries trade differentiated industrial commodities. We show that if all countries are symmetric, the complete FTA network is pairwise stable and it is the unique stable network if industrial commodities are not highly substitutable. We also compare FTAs and customs unions (CUs) as to which of these two regimes facilitates global trade liberalization, noticing that unlike CUs, each signatory of an FTA can have another FTA without consent of other member countries.     

Tariff Revenue Competition in a Free Trade Area: The Case of Asymmetric Large Countries

The striking result has been shown by Richardson that tariff revenue competition between two symmetric member countries of a free trade area (FTA) results in complete elimination of external tariffs if there exists a pure‐strategy Nash equilibrium at all. Richardson also conjectures without building a model that if member countries are asymmetric in market size, there exists a pure‐strategy Nash equilibrium in which both countries set positive external tariffs. We explicitly extend his tariff competition model into the case of asymmetric FTA member countries, and confirm his conjecture. We also show that there exists a mixed‐strategy Nash equilibrium in the case of symmetric countries.     

Dynamic Free Trade Networks: Some Numerical Results

To help predict whether the proliferation of free trade agreements (FTAs) continues until global free trade is effectively attained, this paper investigates dynamic paths of FTAs, generated by numerical simulations of a model of an FTA network formation game with many countries. The characteristics of the final FTA network naturally depend on how the proposer of an FTA is chosen in each period. The paper finds that if the country that has the largest incentive to form an FTA is chosen as a proposer in each period, the network evolution always leads to a unique final FTA network, which may or may not be the complete network of FTAs. FTA networks often evolve to a partition of the world into a small number of groups of asymmetric size owing to the negative network externality caused by preference erosion.     

我国企业自主创新能力影响因素分析与模型构建研究

进入WTO后,中国企业规模依然较小,国际核心竞争力相对较弱,创新能力差,在激烈的市场竞争环境中,我国企业必须迅速提升自主创新能力.通过分析企业创新力不足的原因,提出影响因素为:信息、知识、组织、技术、制度与环境、教育与培训,构建了企业自主创新能力驱动模型.