International Trade Policy towards Monopoly and Oligopoly*

This paper highlights the importance of product differentiation and endogenous R&D in determining the optimal R&D policy, in a model where investment in cost‐reducing R&D is committed before firms compete in a differentiated‐goods third‐country export market. R&D is always taxed in oligopolies for high degrees of product differentiation. For lower degrees of product differentiation the duopoly is subsidized or the government remains inactive. In contrast, the monopoly is always subsidized. The government with a duopoly may be active or inactive depending on the degree of product differentiation. Thus, we may observe a reversal in the sign of the optimal R&D policy if the degree of product differentiation changes or, alternatively, if there is a change in the number of firms. Similar qualitative results hold if trade policy uses output subsidies, instead of R&D promotion.     

移民网络、国际贸易与区域贸易协定

本文从移民网络的角度探讨了区域贸易协定(FTA)缔结的动因问题,提出并证明了"移民网络促进FTA缔结"这一假说,并发现移民网络因素的加入可以将既有FTA缔结动因相关研究的模型预测准确率提升约4%,具有重要的意义。进一步的机制检验发现,移民网络主要通过促进双边贸易流来提升两国FTA的签订概率,表现为"移民网络—国际贸易—FTA缔结"这一核心发生机制。本文拓展性的细化研究还发现,无论从时间趋势或FTA缔结数量而言,移民网络对FTA缔结所起到的促进作用都呈现出边际递减规律;"移民网络—国际贸易—FTA缔结"机制在"南-北"国家对组合中会得到增强,但在"北-北"国家对组合中的表现较弱。本文的结论意味着,移民网络是发展中国家参与区域经济合作的重要资源,在当前贸易自由化多边进程受阻、逆全球化思潮涌动、国际秩序和规则面临重塑的背景下,充分发挥和利用"移民红利",对我国FTA战略的推进及世界FTA领域"中国范本"的探索有重要意义。     

International Environmental Agreements and Strategic Voting*

This paper explores the outcome of an international environmental agreement when the governments are elected by their citizens. It also considers a voter's incentives for supporting candidates who are less green than she is. In the extreme case of “global” pollution, the elected politicians pay no attention to the environment, and the resulting international agreement is totally ineffective. Moreover, if governments cannot negotiate and have to decide non‐cooperatively (and voters are aware of this), the elected politicians can be greener, ecological damage can be lower and the median voter's payoff can be higher than in the case with bargaining.     

论区域协定和服务贸易的政策问题

原载:《世界银行政策研究工作报告》第2852号,002年6月一、前言有关货物贸易一体化协议的成本和收益的文献可谓众多,但分析服务贸易中这类协议的涵义的文献却几乎没有①,这是令人感到奇怪的,因为几乎每一部主要区域协定都涉及到服务领域。人们不禁要问:是否因为服务贸易是如此的不同。以至我们必须修改迄今为止适用于货物贸易领域的结论呢?尤其是,如果一国的自由化的服务贸易在区域的环境下比在多边环境下更快会出现什么情况?要是一国获得优先的国外货物市场准入并从中受益,那么是否表明该国理应以国内市场服务领域的优先准入来交换呢?我们…     

International Trade, Regional Free Trade Agreements, and Economic Development

In 1991, Krugman illustrated that natural (regional) free trade agreements (FTAs) are likely to be welfare-enhancing if intercontinental costs are prohibitively high, but are likely to be welfare-reducing if such costs are zero. In 1995, Frankel, Stein and Wei extended the analysis to consider positive but nonprohibitive transport costs. This paper extends these models to allow for countries of different economic size. Large countries will tend to have higher relative wages, influencing the relative gains and losses from natural FTAs. For even modest differences in size, intracontinental FTAs are welfare-enhancing for larger countries, regardless of strong preferences for diversity or low intercontinental transport costs.     

Domestic Trade and Transport Costs in International Trade Theory

This paper examines the effects that domestic trade and transport margins have on international trade and the consequences for the central trade theorems. Specifically, the Heckscher-Ohlin-Samuelson model is expanded to include a third industry that produces the nontraded domestic services in transportation, warehousing, wholesaling and retailing required to market goods to final purchasers. It is found that the domestic margins probably impose substantial natural trade barriers and that they can cause the central trade theorems (factor-price equalization, Stolper-Samuelson, and Rybczynski) to fail. [F11]     

The Role of Trade and International Economic Policy in Indian Economic Performance*

India's economic policies have undergone major reforms since the early 1990s. Before that, government regulation and control of economic activity was pervasive, and the trade sector did very poorly. One consequence was that imports were highly restricted and their scarcity was itself a major constraint on growth. After the crisis of the early1990s, trade policy was substantially liberalized. In this paper, the pre‐1990s regime is first briefly described. Thereafter, the economic policy reforms that impinged most directly on the trade sector are set forth, and the response of exports and imports to those changes is outlined. Exports have grown rapidly, from about 5% of the gross domestic product to around 15%, and they continue to grow at an average annual rate of 20%. Improved performance of the trade sector has been a major contributing factor to India's dramatically accelerated growth performance. A final section of this paper assesses the current situation, and sets forth the major policy challenges that will need to be met if that performance is to be sustained, if not improved upon.     

造船产业贸易政策与我国造船企业国际竞争力研究

本文主要通过国际比较的方式,对影响我国造船企业国际竞争力的产业贸易政策进行了分析讨论,查找了我国与造船先进国家在船价补贴、税收和造船融资政策等方面存在的差距,进而提出了优化我国造船产业贸易政策的对策建议,对改善我国造船产业贸易政策,提高造船企业国际竞争力具有一定的借鉴意义.     

Trade Imbalance and Domestic Market Competition Policy

This study investigates the effect of a country's suppression of competition in its market for nontradables. It assumes that the initial equilibrium is stationary and demonstrates that if competition is suppressed in a small country, the country's trade surplus increases in the short run. In the large country case, the same change creates an excess demand for future tradables and affects the relative price between present and future tradables. Using a two‐country model, the study shows that this price change redistributes real wealth from the country with a trade deficit to the country with a trade surplus.     

The Welfare Synergy of Bundling International Environmental Agreements with International Trade Treaties

This paper examines whether linking environmental cooperation with international trade agreements improves the welfare of the participating countries and allows countries to move closer to free trade compared with trade‐only agreements. The model is an infinitely repeated game with the threat of reversion to Nash equilibrium if an economy deviates from the cooperative agreement. It is found that such a synergy exists in a symmetric two‐country model with two goods, both emitting pollutants even when the externalities have local impact. A combination of analytic and numerical simulation analysis is used to derive the conclusions.     

International Trade and Income Inequality*

We propose a simple theory that shows a mechanism through which international trade entails wage and job polarization. We consider two countries in which individuals with different abilities work either as knowledge workers, who develop differentiated products, or as production workers, who engage in production. In equilibrium, ex ante symmetric firms attract knowledge workers with different abilities, and this creates firm heterogeneity in product quality. Market integration disproportionately benefits firms that produce high-quality products. This winner-take-all trend of product markets causes a war for talents, which exacerbates income inequality within the countries and leads to labor-market polarization.     

Endogenous Growth and International Trade*

This paper clarifies and slightly generalizes the basic endogenous-growth model. I prove the basic theorems without the usual assumption that the distribution of knowledge around the world is irrelevant. Results are stated in terms of lemmas, theorems, and corollaries in order to bring out as clearly as possible the role of each assumption.     

国际贸易与国内制度框架

正式的国际贸易理论不能完全解释发展中国家扩大出口带来的经济增长。作者运用制度分析的方法，考察了东亚的例证，分析了国际贸易在什么样的国内制度框架中才能成为推动经济发展的积极因素。     

试论国内区际贸易与对外贸易利益的关系

对外贸易的发展理应建立在国内区际贸易充分开展的基础上。国内区际贸易的开展对对外贸易利益的取得具有重要的意义。我国改革开放过程中的国内市场分割现象,使得国内区际贸易滞后于对外贸易快速发展,并制约了对外贸易利益最大化的实现。本文的政策结论是通过加快改革逐步实现国内经济市场化和一体化以提高外贸利益。     

Strategic Trade Policy Under Uncertainty*

This paper extends the Brander-Spencer (1985) model by considering market uncertainty, exploring nonlinear policy, and examining firms' choices of strategic variables. By investigating the interrelationship between trade policy and market conduct, we find that unlike the often-studied linear policy, a nonlinear policy can influence the domestic firm's choice of strategic variables and hence alter the market conduct in favor of the domestic country. Therefore, a nonlinear policy proves strictly superior to a linear one.     

Trade Policy and Productivity Growth in OECD Manufacturing *

Trade liberalization may promote economic growth in a number of ways, including by accelerating the rate of technological change. Firms that face more intense import competition may be spurred to greater rates of innovation; firms which export may absorb new technologies through their contact with international markets. This paper examines evidence on trade policy and productivity growth for a sample of thirteen OECD countries and including eighteen manufacturing sectors, using data primarily from the 1980s. Within individual sectors, there are strong productivity convergence effects within the OECD. After controlling for convergence, we find a positive association between high rates of productivity growth and low tariffs, and between high productivity growth and strong export performance. We found no particular association between high productivity growth and import penetration. The results are consistent with the possibility of positive linkages between trade liberalization and accelerated productivity growth. [F1, O4]     

International R&D Collaboration and Strategic Trade Policy

We study an international trade model with symmetric countries and symmetric firms, with countries making strategic trade policies, anticipating the decisions of firms on R&D collaboration at the subsequent stage. In general we should observe a conflict between the equilibrium outcome and the efficient one. We find that an asymmetric outcome where one country unilaterally liberalizes trade while the other does not is likely to occur. We also find that while banning international R&D collaboration may help to reach free trade equilibrium in certain situations, it provides little assistance in reaching the outcome that maximizes global welfare.     

Domestic Credit Growth and International Capital Flows*

During the pre‐crisis period, Europe experienced substantial cross‐country variation in domestic credit growth and cross‐border capital flows. We investigate the inter‐relations between domestic credit growth and international capital flows during the period 1993–2008, with a special focus on the boom period of 2003–2008. We establish that domestic credit growth in European countries is strongly related to net debt inflows but not to net equity inflows. This pattern also holds for an extended sample of 54 advanced and emerging economies.     

The Mercantilist Index of Trade Policy*

We introduce an index of trade policy restrictiveness defined as the uniform tariff that maintains the same trade volume as a given tariff/quota structure. Our index overcomes the problems of the trade‐weighted average tariff: It avoids substitution bias, correctly accounts for general equilibrium transfers, and takes import volume instead of welfare as benchmark. Empirical applications to international cross section and time‐series comparisons of trade policy confirm our theoretical results: Trade‐weighted average tariffs generally underestimate the true height of tariffs as measured by the trade‐volume‐equivalent index; this in turn always underestimates the welfare‐equivalent index.