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.     

US Trade Policy in the Trump Administration

President Donald Trump has emphasized three recurring themes regarding trade policy: the importance of trade balances, including bilateral trade balances, currency manipulation to gain unfair advantage in trade, and “disastrous” trade agreements. Asia figures prominently in these concerns. Trump withdrew the United States from the Trans‐Pacific Partnership, is increasing contingent or process protection, demanding the renegotiation under duress of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Korea‐United States Free Trade Agreement. These policies are modeled quantitatively and results generated for sectoral output and employment at the state and metropolitan area level.     

Pollution Policy and Trade Liberalization of Environmental Goods

During the Doha Round at the World Trade Organization, reductions in trade barriers on environmental goods (EG) were put forward as a means of helping developed and developing countries alike deal with current environmental problems. We examine the potential effectiveness of such a strategy in a developing country that imports all its consumption of EG from an imperfectly competitive foreign eco-industry. We point out that trade liberalization of EG might in fact lead to less stringent pollution taxes, which can result in an actual rise in pollution levels. We then show that the environmental effectiveness objective of this trade reform can be achieved when the regulator uses quantitative abatement standards as an alternative pollution policy instrument. However, this environmental achievement comes at the expense of social welfare.     

Environmental Policy, Intra-Industry Trade and Transfrontier Pollution

The paper discusses effects of domestic environmental policy on foreignemissions and on transboundary pollution. We use a Dixit-Stiglitz typemodel of monopolistic competition with an endogenous number of firms.Production generates environmental externalities which spill over to theother country. It is shown that environmental policy has an impact onmarket structure at home and abroad. These market structure effectsinduce changes in emissions abroad. In contrast to what has been derivedin earlier contributions, it turns out to be possible that tighterenvironmental standards at home lead to less emissions abroad. The paperderives these results and provides the economic intuition behind them.Finally, conditions for optimal environmental policies are derived.     

Trade and Domestic Policy Linkage in International Agreements*

A central question in discussions of integrating negotiations over domestic policy (e.g., environmental policy or labor standards) into traditional trade agreements is the degree to which the trade policy and domestic policy provisions of an agreement should be explicitly linked. For example, should the World Trade Organization enforce domestic policy obligations with the threat of the suspension of trade concessions? This article considers the conditions under which linking trade and domestic policy agreements within a self‐enforcing agreement is beneficial, and argues that the benefits of such policy linkage may be lower than is commonly thought.     

Corrupt Importers,Domestic Producers & Welfare: Role of Trade Policy

Stringent regulatory foreign exchange and trade policies create distortions and lead to mis‐invoicing of imports and exports. Such legally prescribed opportunistic behavior is alleged to be common in LDCs because of their lack of openness and restrictive policies. This paper focuses on the impact of various trade and currency policies like tariffs, quotas, different exchange rates, and devaluation and administrative policy instruments like monitoring and penalties on import mis‐invoicing under Cournot quantity competition. A framework is developed to analyze the impact of those policies on importers and domestic producers both under fixed and flexible exchange rate regimes.     

Strategic Environmental Policy under Free Trade with Transboundary Pollution

We analyze the effects of trade liberalization on environmental policies in a strategic setting when there is transboundary pollution. Trade liberalization can result in a race to the bottom in environmental taxes, which makes both countries worse off. This is not due to the terms of trade motive, but rather the incentive, in a strategic setting, to reduce the incidence of transboundary pollution. With command and control policies (emission quotas), countries are unable to influence foreign emissions by strategic choice of domestic policy; hence, there is no race to the bottom. However, with internationally tradable quotas, unless pollution is a pure global public bad, there is a race to the bottom in environmental policy. Under free trade, internationally nontradable quotas result in the lowest pollution level and strictly welfare‐dominate taxes. The ordering of internationally tradable quotas and pollution taxes depends, among other things, on the degree of international pollution spillovers.     

Trade,Strategic Environmental Policy,and Global Pollution

This paper examines the effects of international trade in a model with global pollution that accumulates over time because of production emissions in each country. If countries cooperatively determine their environmental policies, autarky and free trade in the absence of trade costs generate the same optimal solution. By contrast, if environmental policies are determined noncooperatively, the effects of trade on global pollution and welfare are ambiguous because policy games can result in multiple equilibria. Although trade increases both the lower and upper bounds of the pollution stock, whether trade expands the range of possible steady‐state pollution levels is ambiguous. The analysis then extends to consider trade costs.     

China's Exchange Rate Policy and Its Trade Balance with the US

This paper investigates the claim that China's exchange rate policy causes the US trade deficit with China to grow. Although there is no evidence that changes in the exchange rate cause the trade deficit to rise in the short run, a statistically significant long‐run relationship between the RMB/dollar exchange rate and the US trade deficit with China is detected. As the value of the dollar declines (or RMB appreciates), ceteris paribus, so does the trade deficit. Hence, there is a need for China to adjust its exchange rate policy to help reduce the ever mounting US trade deficit.     

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.     

区域协同治理政策的大气污染减排效应研究——基于双重差分法的实证检验

区域协同治理政策是中国提升大气污染治理效果的关键。首先对政策执行可能产生的治理效果展开分析,提出假设1~4;进一步以地级及以上城市的工业SO2为典型污染物,构建双重差分模型（DID）评估区域协同治理政策的减排效果,以及技术创新、产业结构和对外开放三种中介路径下的间接影响。结果显示：(1).以京津冀和长三角地区城市为实验组,其它城市作为对照组,区域协同治理政策的影响系数为-1.3427,政策显著降低污染排放水平,结果具有良好的稳健性。(2).分样本检验显示,京津冀地区政策效果明显优于长三角地区,经济发达地区的政策效果高于欠发达地区,政策执行中的区域异质性不容忽视。(3). 三条中介路径中,区域协同治理政策通过技术创新和对外开放的污染减排效果显著,而通过影响产业结构产生的间接驱动效果微弱。继续推动区域协同治理政策落实中,充分考虑区域差异化特征基础上,重视中介路径的识别和可能带来的减排潜力应成为重要的政策优化方向。     

Environmental Quality and Industry Protection with Noncooperative Versus Cooperative Domestic and Trade Policies

This paper characterizes environmental quality and industry protection in a large-country Grossman–Helpman model when production or consumption externalities exist and governments decide noncooperatively or cooperatively on domestic and trade policies. Governments choose policies efficiently from among those available, but competitive lobbies may prefer less efficient regimes. Under restricted policy availability, political-support effects can offset terms-of-trade effects on equilibrium outcomes, and inefficient trade policies can lead to higher environmental quality than efficient domestic policies. If governments cooperate, they can satisfy particular organized industries at lower costs to other lobbies and total welfare. This may result in lower environmental quality than noncooperation.     

环境经济政策对贸易的影响分析

环境经济政策对贸易的影响在于它的实施使企业为保护环境而增加了成本,环境保护成本会全部或部分进入产品的最终定价中,价格的升高会影响到一国贸易的基础.从环境经济政策影响贸易的表现来分析,主要是影响一国的比较优势及专业化生产,进而影响到贸易模式和贸易量.因此,在应用环境经济政策以实现环境目标时可以通过政府干预减少其对贸易的影响,以实现贸易和环境的协调发展.     

美国贸易保护主义政策对全球价值链的挑战与中国应对

特朗普执政政府对全球主要经济体挑起了贸易纠纷,其背后是美国贸易保护主义的重新抬头。美国贸易保护主义政策破坏了多边贸易体系,动摇了构建全球价值链的基础;通过推高贸易成本并增加收益的不确定性,从而导致全球价值链发生结构性改变;通过影响消费市场导致全球价值链发生强制性变迁。美国贸易保护主义政策不但降低了中国在全球价值链中的参与度,还通过压制技术进步来打压中国在全球价值链中的地位,并降低了中国在全球价值链中的预期收益。美国贸易保护主义政策下中国可以通过调整中西部的产业布局,优化国内价值链分工体系;通过创新驱动来提升核心技术的研发效率,进一步拓展技术外溢渠道;积极参与国际多边贸易体系的治理,增强本国企业在全球价值链中的话语权;促使国际贸易对象的多元化,逐步替代美国在中国外贸体系中的主导地位等途径来参与全球价值链分工体系。     

Shared Renewable Resources: Gains from Trade and Trade Policy

This paper examines the effects of international trade and trade policy in a two‐country, two‐good model with an open‐access renewable resource that is internationally shared. We show that both countries may still benefit from trade when they specialize in the production of their comparative advantage good, although the shared resource is reduced by trade. In addition, we demonstrate that the steady state utility of a resource‐good importing country may be reduced by trade, even if it specializes in the production of a non‐resource good. Import tariffs and export taxes on a resource good may increase or decrease the shared stock level depending on the production patterns in a trading steady state. The trade policy is likely to be Pareto‐improving when the shared stock rises, while both countries may be made worse off by the trade policy when the shared stock falls.     

Dynamic Interactions in Trade Policy in a Differential Game Model of Tariff Protection

This paper develops a two‐country dynamic game model of tariff protection to reconsider optimal trade policies and their implications for welfare. The authors show that an import subsidy is optimal in the feedback Nash equilibria, which results in a curious possibility that the domestic market is monopolized by the foreign firrm. However, welfare comparisons among Nash equilibria, free trade, and autarky reveal that feedback Nash equilibria involve higher welfare than both autarky and free trade, i.e. dynamic noncooperative choices of policy serve as tacit policy coordination and ensure larger trade gains relative to free trade.     

Trade Policy Transparency and Investor Confidence: Some Implications for an Effective Trade Policy Review Mechanism

This paper is concerned with the value of the WTO's Trade Policy Review Mechanism, particularly its transparency role and its potential role in policy stability, for investor confidence in developing countries. The implications of reduced risk and uncertainty regarding trade policy for investor confidence, and ultimately for the capital stock and the long-run structure of production, are examined in an analytical model. Certainty equivalence is employed to assess the general equilibrium effects of risk and uncertainty. Their reduction can boost risk-adjusted returns, leading to an increase in long-run levels of capital.     

Institutionalism and New Trade Theory: Rethinking Comparative Advantage and Trade Policy

Gomory and Baumol (2000), and Samuelson (2004) have raised concerns about international trade’s future impact on U.S. national income. The focus is how globalization may affect the size and distribution across countries of gains from trade. Though their analysis is developed using a pure trade theoretical framework, it has strands in common with institutionalist thinking. Their findings spotlight the need for a new U.S. trade policy agenda aimed at maximizing the U.S. share of gains from trade, and complementing conventional Keynesian open economy macroeconomic analysis.     

Environment and Trade: The Relationship of International Trade and Environmental Policy

Followers of urban affairs and public policy have written much over the years about the rise of suburbia and development beyond older city boundaries in the US, whether such development is called urban, suburban, or ex-urban sprawl. Many researchers have focused on various issues concerning sprawl, especially on the unintended consequences that new development has had for municipal finances, neighborhood income and residential segregation, and transportation planning, among other issues. Over the last decade, a new area in the literature on sprawl has focused on how the “built environment” of residential areas can impact health and emergency services. We contribute to this latest set of papers on sprawl by trying to empirically estimate the impact of sprawl in metropolitan regions on the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) spending on “public assistance.” This assistance encompasses spending on debris removal, emergency protective measures, and rehabilitating or rebuilding of infrastructure, public buildings, public utilities, parks and recreational areas, in post-disaster relief efforts. In our exploratory analysis, the results indicate that urban sprawl is a factor in influencing the level of FEMA’s public assistance spending.