Bifurcations in the evolutionary approach to multilateralizing trade policy

The Doha Round on multilateral trade liberalization, originally intended to better integrate developing countries into the world economy, has been largely considered a failure. With the Doha outcome falling short of expectations, North–South trade remains underdeveloped. Embedding the political economy and the resulting importance of reciprocating trade liberalization in an evolutionary model along Axelrod–Rapoport lines indicates that factor endowments are crucial in triggering trade policies. Their pivotal nature gives rise to bifurcations, thereby tilting policies towards or away from liberalization trajectories. The theoretical insights are reflected in an empirical analysis, thus strengthening the case for a variable-geometry approach.     

Pro-poor trade policy in Sub-Saharan Africa

This paper examines the presence of a pro-poor bias in the existing structure of protection of six Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Gambia, and Madagascar. We build on a simple agricultural household production model and we propose an extension to include adjustments in labor income. Our approach, which can be implemented without repeated cross-sections of household level data, suits well the data constraints in SSA. It also allows us to capture the heterogeneity in trade protection at the tariff line level. The pro-poor bias indicators suggest that SSA's trade policies tend to be biased in favor of poor households, as these policies redistribute income from rich to poor households. This is because protection increases the agricultural prices of goods that are sold by African households and this effect dominates both the impacts of higher consumption prices and the strong Stolper–Samuelson effects that benefit skilled over unskilled workers.     

Inequality and endogenous trade policy outcomes

An enduring puzzle in international economics is why trade interventions are biased in favor of import-competing rather than export sectors and therefore restrict trade. In this paper, we show that if the government's objective reflects a concern for inequality then trade policy generally exhibits an anti-trade bias. Importantly, under neutral assumptions, the mechanism that we analyze generates the anti-trade bias independently of whether factors are specific or mobile across sectors. The mechanism also generates an anti-trade bias between large countries even after they sign reciprocal trade agreements that eliminate any terms-of-trade motivation for the use of trade protection.     

Endogenous political organization and the value of trade agreements

In a bargaining model of endogenous protection, I introduce fixed costs of political-organization that need to be incurred by capitalists prior to actual lobbying. Unlike Maggi and Rodriguez-Clare [J. Pol. Econ. 106(3) (1998) 575] intersectoral capital mobility is disallowed. Nevertheless, I am still able to obtain their main result that a government with low bargaining power vis-à-vis the import-competing lobby precommits to a free-trade agreement. Further, with high fixed organizational costs, the government prefers to stay out of such agreements. Its maximum bargaining power consistent with signing a trade agreement has an inverse-V-shaped relationship with respect to the size of fixed costs.     

Trade disputes and the implementation of protection under the GATT: an empirical assessment

This paper is a first attempt to empirically determine why countries choose to violate or adhere to GATT rules when making trade policy adjustments between negotiating rounds. We use a previously unexploited set of data in which countries implemented two ‘types’ of protection under the GATT system between 1973 and 1994: (i) ‘legal’ protection in which countries utilized the GATT’s safeguards provisions; and (ii) ‘illegal’ protection in which the protection was provided outside of the safeguards provisions, resulting in a formal trade dispute. We find substantial evidence that concerns for retaliation affect government policy decisions in ways which contribute to the explanation of the existence of trade disputes.     

Trade policy-making in a model of legislative bargaining

In democracies, trade policy is the result of interactions among many agents with different agendas. In accordance with this observation, we construct a dynamic model of legislative trade policy-making in the realm of distributive politics. An economy consists of different sectors, each of which is concentrated in one or more electoral districts. Each district is represented by a legislator in the Congress. Legislative process is modeled as a multilateral sequential bargaining game à la Baron and Ferejohn (1989). Some surprising results emerge: bargaining can be welfare-worsening for all participants; legislators may vote for bills that make their constituents worse off; identical industries will receive very different levels of tariff. The results pose a challenge to empirical work, since equilibrium trade policy is a function not only of economic fundamentals but also of political variables at the time of congressional negotiations — some of them random realizations of mixed bargaining strategies.     

Multilateral trade negotiations, bilateral opportunism and the rules of GATT/WTO

Trade negotiations occur through time and between the governments of many countries. An important issue is thus whether the value of concessions that a government wins in a current negotiation may be eroded in a future bilateral negotiation to which it is not party. We identify rules of negotiation that serve to protect the welfare of governments that are not participating in the bilateral negotiation. Our main finding is that the two central principles of GATT/WTO—nondiscrimination (MFN) and reciprocity—preserve the welfare of nonparticipating governments and therefore offer a “first-line of defense” against bilateral opportunism.     

Exporting under trade policy uncertainty: Theory and evidence

I provide novel evidence for the impact of trade policy uncertainty on exporters. In a dynamic, heterogeneous firms model, trade policy uncertainty will delay the entry of exporters into new markets and make them less responsive to applied tariff reductions. Policy instruments that reduce or eliminate uncertainty, such as binding trade policy commitments at the WTO, increase entry. The predictions are tested on disaggregated, product-level Australian imports with model-consistent measures of uncertainty. The estimates show that growth of exporter–product varieties would have been 7% lower between 1993 and 2001 without the binding commitments implemented after the WTO was formed in 1996. If Australia reduced all its tariffs and bindings to zero, more than half of predicted product growth is accounted by removing uncertainty. These results illuminate and quantify an important new channel for trade creation.     

Trade policy, trade volumes and plant-level productivity in Colombian manufacturing industries

This paper explores a period of substantial variation in trade policy across industries in Colombia (1977-1991) to examine whether increased exposure to foreign competition generates productivity gains for manufacturing plants. Using an estimation methodology that addresses the shortcomings of previous studies, we find a strong positive impact of tariff liberalization on plant productivity, even after controlling for plant and industry heterogeneity, real exchange rates, and cyclical effects. The impact of liberalization is stronger for larger plants and plants in less competitive industries. Our findings are not driven by the endogeneity of protection. Similar results are obtained when using effective rates of protection and import penetration ratios as measures of protection. Productivity gains under trade liberalization are linked to increases in intermediate inputs' imports, skill intensity, and machinery investments, and to output reallocations from less to more productive plants.     

Production uncertainty and trade policy commitment

Agricultural markets are characterized by production and marketing lags. Uncertainty is also an inherent feature of agricultural markets. This paper investigates if two policy active importers will choose to commit to their import levels or keep the flexibility to revise their ex-ante import levels once production decisions are made and the uncertainty is resolved. This is the constant dilemma faced by prospective WTO members. We assume production in both importing countries is subject to an asymmetric random shock. We show that a government will not want to commit to its import level when there is a high degree of uncertainty in production. However, an importing country is likely to commit to a trade policy in equilibrium although the equilibrium may be Pareto dominated. Under certain conditions, an equilibrium in which one country commits to its ex-ante import level while the other chooses the flexibility option can emerge. In this setting, international trade agreements play an important role.     

Effects of multilateral and preferential trade policy reform in Africa: The case of Uganda

Abstract

This paper estimates the effects on production, trade and economic welfare of current trade policy regimes throughout the world on Uganda relative to other economies. This will be a benchmark against which to examine various multilateral and preferential trade policy scenarios that might emerge over the next decade as part of the WTO's Doha Round and from the expected move later this decade towards Economic Partnership Agreements with the European Union. The results suggest modest gains or worse for Uganda, in part because it already has low tariffs and ready preferential access to rich-country markets. Several important caveats to this type of analysis are stressed though, before drawing out some trade and policy implications for Uganda.     

Aid for trade and trade policy in recipient countries

ABSTRACT

This article explores the impact of Aid for Trade (AfT) flows on trade policy in 123 recipient countries over the period of 2002 to 2015. It shows empirical evidence that AfT interventions are conducive to trade policy liberalization. These results apply to both the entire sample and to the sub-sample of least developed countries (LDCs). Additionally, the analysis shows that the lower the development level, the higher the positive impact of AfT inflows on recipient countries’ trade policy liberalization, although above the US$ 4,885.40 threshold of real per capita income, AfT inflows exert no significant impact on trade policy.     

Costly revenue-raising and the case for favoring import-competing industries

A standard finding in the political economy of trade policy literature is that we should expect export-oriented industries to attract more assistance than import-competing industries. In reality, however, trade policy is heavily biased toward supporting import industries. This paper shows how the costliness of raising revenue via taxation makes trade subsidies less desirable and trade taxes more desirable in a standard protection for sale framework. The model is then estimated and its predictions tested using U.S. tariff data. An empirical estimate of the costliness of revenue-raising is also obtained.     

Do WTO members have more liberal trade policy?

This paper uses 68 measures of trade policy and liberalization to ask if membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) and its predecessor the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) is associated with more liberal trade policy. Almost no measures of trade policy are significantly correlated with GATT/WTO membership. Trade liberalizations, when they occur, usually lag GATT entry by many years, and the GATT/WTO often admits countries that are closed and remain closed for years. The exception to the rule is that WTO members tend to have slightly more freedom as judged by the Heritage Foundation's index.     

Non-traded goods and optimal trade policy in a cash-in-advance economy

This paper develops a standard trade model of a small open monetary economy with two traded and one non-traded goods. Money is introduced through a generalized cash-in-advance constraint where the share of goods purchases that must be made using cash, varies across sectors. We find that free trade may be harmful so that alternative policy instruments may be considered to improve welfare. In addition, we study and compare the optimal tariff formula and the optimal consumption tax structure. In the presence of a monetary distortion of the non-traded good, a consumption tax may not Pareto dominate a tariff although the latter bears an additional production burden. This corroborates the theory of second best.     

Foreign monetary shocks,differentiated products and international transmission: a two-country model with intra-industry trade

In this paper we study how the impact of a foreign monetary shock is transmitted between two monopolistically competitive economies engaging in intra-industry trade with differentiated products. Intra-industry trade is the only international link that works through the flexible exchange rate affecting national price levels and a product's internal and external relative prices. While national price levels are subject to purchasing power parity, the two relative prices are determined by the interaction between macro and micro variables. In this context, the exchange rate can insulate a national economy perfectly from a foreign monetary shock provided that monopolists adjust prices. Even if monopolists keep prices rigid, this shock only affects domestic real balances and aggregate demand, leaving domestic aggregate output unchanged because the real balances effect is just offset by the resulting unfavorable relative prices effects under the assumption of Spence-Dixit-Stiglitz preferences.     

国际贸易环境下我国对外贸易政策的发展方向

近十几年来,全球贸易量取得了惊人的跨越式增长,而自由贸易与环境的关系问题也日趋尖锐。一方面,许多发达国家利用不对等的贸易和投资手段从发展中国家攫取大量战略性资源,却造成这些国家境内生态环境的严重失调;另一方面,一味地追求贸易扩张、资金积累和工业化又实际加剧了全球环境的恶化。环境效应对贸易的挤压性制约日益上升为国际贸易发展的焦点。在此背景下,引入环境变量,促进贸易策略的可持续性便成为实现我国对外贸易科学发展的必然之路。     

Trade liberalization through asset markets

Political-economy expositions of trade policy have traditionally described asset or factor ownership as not subject to change. Asset markets, however, allow individuals to change the composition of income sources. We consider an economy with stochastic productivity to show how the equilibrium composition of asset portfolios influences individual attitudes toward free trade. The model links financial market completeness and trade liberalization in the second half of the 20th century and provides a contributing answer to why governments in poorer countries without well-developed financial markets have failed to liberalize trade.     

Using survey data to assess the distributional effects of trade policy

This paper develops a method to estimate the general equilibrium distributional effects of trade policies using household survey data. Trade reforms cause the domestic prices of traded goods to change and this, in turn, triggers a series of general equilibrium effects. Among these, I estimate the impacts of trade on the prices of traded goods, non-traded goods, and wages. By combining the estimates of the consumption impacts and the labor income impacts, I am able to assess how trade policies affect households across the entire range of the income distribution. An application of the procedure to the study of the distributional effects of Mercosur shows that the average poor and middle-income family in Argentina has benefited from the trade agreement.     

Protection and jobs: explaining the structure of trade barriers across industries

This paper develops a model of protection and tests it using US data, including new protection measures. We find that protection in an industry increases with its employment but not with its level of output. We also find that lobbying entails significant transactions costs. We have limited evidence that industry characteristics, such as the number of firms and geographical concentration, affect protection. Nested tests imply that assuming lump-sum rebating of import revenues or rents is justified. The results also suggest that US policy makers weight a dollar of campaign contributions about 15% more heavily than a dollar of national income.