Under the Cover of Antidumping: Does Administered Protection Facilitate Domestic Collusion?

Anecdotal evidence suggests that domestic firms can use the antidumping petition process to engage in collusion and increase domestic prices. In this paper, I test whether the antidumping petition process itself can help domestic firms raise prices. I propose a method to identify whether firms in the industry experience a structural break in the level of market power possessed by the firms at the time that they file their antidumping petition. I use this methodology to analyze the impact of antidumping petitions on competition levels in two industries. I find little evidence that either of these industries increased their market power following the filing of petitions for trade relief, nor even from the protection that resulted from these petitions. These findings suggest that the widespread belief that antidumping leads to more market power may not always hold.     

The Heterogeneous Effects of Trade Protection: A Study of US Antidumping Duties on Portland Cement

For many traded products, high transportation and trade costs can lead to regionally segmented markets, which affect both the pattern of trade and the impact of trade policy. This paper studies the imposition of antidumping duties in the cement industry and finds striking regional variation in their impact on domestic prices, sales and imports. Duties that were imposed on Japanese producers that were shipping cement to the US West-Coast coastal markets led to imperfect substitution to other imports, which allowed domestic prices and production to increase. Imperfect substitution also occurred following duties that were imposed on Mexican producers that were shipping cement to the US Gulf of Mexico coastal markets. But in the US Southwest border markets, the same duties had no impact on the domestic prices of cement. I link the variation in responses across regions to hysteresis that was due to high exit costs.     

Antidumping and Industrial Organization

Although antidumping duties are instruments of trade policy, they are motivated by and have potentially significant impacts on domestic industry interests. The articles in this special issue provide evidence on the effects of antidumping on domestic firms and import patterns; in particular, they stress that these effects are not likely to be uniform across all producers within an industry, and will often depend on how domestic interests respond.     

回应反倾销博弈模型与案例分析

在比较分析外国对中国回应反倾销后，建立了一个回应反倾销博弈模型并给出了理论解释，结合美国对中国彩电回应反倾销案进行了具体剖析。本文认为了解对华回应反倾销，对找到外国对华反倾销的关键环节、有效预防外国对华反倾销并利用“回应反倾销”对外反倾销等有重要的意义。     

Antidumping and Production-Line Exit: The Case of the US Steel Industry

We present and examine a novel data set that contains production line information inside US steel plants. We exploit this highly disaggregated data to perform the first study of entry and exit behavior at the level of the production line within individual plants. Our empirical analysis reveals a number of interesting results. First, smaller production lines are more likely to shut down, as are lines that are owned by larger firms. Younger production lines and lines that have undergone modernization are more likely to survive. Our results indicate that lines that are operated by integrated producers are more likely to exit. We find no evidence, however, that antidumping decreases the likelihood of exit, despite the steel industry’s frequent use of antidumping protection.     

The Effect of U.S. Antidumping Law on Firms' Market Power: An Empirical Test

An empirical version of the Lerner index is used to investigate the market power effects of U.S. firms seeking protection under current antidumping law. The market power consequences are examined for each of the three possible resolutions of an antidumping investigation: petition for relief accepted (and duties levied), petition rejected, or petition withdrawn. For each outcome an industry case study is presented and the market power analysis conducted. The results contained herein support the hypothesis that U.S. firms receiving protection enhance their domestic market power, while firms having their petition rejected experience a decrease in market power. The evidence is less clear for plaintiffs who withdraw their antidumping petition prior to its final resolution.     

反倾销政策对企业生产决策行为的影响分析——基于DTGMIC模型

反倾销政策实施的主要目的是既能抑制国外产品的倾销,又能弥补国内产业遭受的损害,实现国内相关产业的发展。因此,反倾销政策制定的合适与否关系到其效果的实现程度。本文以反倾销政策对企业生产决策行为的影响为研究对象,通过构建动态两阶段非完全竞争博弈模型分析了反倾销政策对企业生产决策行为的影响过程,得出了相应的结论。该结论的得出为我国反倾销调查机关制定反倾销政策提供了相应的理论依据。     

中国反倾销与对华直接投资相关性实证研究

反倾销是目前研究的热点之一,本文从中国反倾销与外商对华直接投资相关性这个角度,利用企业水平的模型进行回归实证分析,并结合案例,得出中国反倾销与外商对华直接投资之间存在正的相关性。结果表明,中国的反倾销会引起外商对华直接投资的增加,特别是跨国公司对华直接投资的增加。     

反倾销：中国面对的形势与应对措施

随着中国国内经济不断增长和对外贸易的不断发展壮大,其与各贸易伙伴之间的贸易摩擦也在日益加剧,面临的反倾销形势也十分严峻。文章从反倾销的一般特征出发,结合世界经济的总体态势和中国经济具体运行情况,分析了中国对外贸易近年来不断遭遇反倾销的现状、原因。在上述分析的基础上,进一步提出了中国政府和企业在应对反倾销指控中应当采取的一些对策措施。     

强化反倾销规避措施的思考

反倾销售规避是国际经济贸易竞争日益加剧和生产商追逐最大商业利益前提下的产物 ,许多国家都将反倾销规避措施体现在反倾销立法当中。     

How Different Are Safeguards from Antidumping? Evidence from US Trade Policies Toward Steel

Use of temporary trade barriers (TTBs) has proliferated across countries, industries, and even policy instruments. We construct a panel of bilateral, product-level US steel imports that are matched to a unique data set on trade policy exclusions that are associated with the 2002 US steel safeguard in order to compare the trade impacts that result from application of various TTB policies over 1989–2003. We find that the trade effects of an applied safeguard—which is statutorily expected to follow the principle of nondiscriminatory treatment—can nevertheless compare closely to the application of the explicitly discriminatory antidumping policy. Our results on trade policy substitutability complement other recent research on these increasingly important forms of import protection.     

Optimal use of patents and trade secrets for complex innovations

This paper studies how an inventor protects a “complex” innovation that involves multiple complementary components. Each component can be protected through either patent or secrecy protection, so that the entire innovation may be protected through a patent-secret combination. Potential entrants might acquire these components either through costly imitation or licensing. I find that, first, secrecy is optimal when the patent length is relatively short; otherwise, a patent-secret combination is optimal; second, the inventor is over-rewarded compared to an inventor with an innovation that is equivalent except that it involves only a single-component so that the entire innovation can be protected through either patent or secrecy protection; and, third, a policy that precludes the use of a patent-secret combination enhances allocative efficiency ex-post but may stifle R&D incentives ex-ante.     

浅谈反倾销对我国的影响及应对措施

20世纪90年代以后,西方国家经济普遍不景气,经济增长率低,失业率居高不下,使全球经济发展缓慢.因此各国为了保护本国产品的国内市场,频繁运用反倾销措施来限制外国产品进入.同时,由于乌拉圭回合协议的生效,要求各国大幅度削减关税和取消进口数量限制,各国为抵消这一谈判结果对本国工业的冲击,利用反倾销自由裁量权,纷纷采用反倾销这一便利而有效的措施.我国遭受反倾销调查的案件太多,这不仅严重影响了我国出口效率,也损害了我国的经济和政治形象.因此,我们要就其特点采取有效的应对措施加以解决.     

A Comparison of American and Japanese Work Practices: Skill Formation, Communications, and Conflict Resolution

This article examines whether American work practices are becoming more similar to Japanese work practices with regard to skill formation, communications, and conflict resolution. I find that separated skills, self-managing teams, and the dual conflict settlement procedure prevalent in three American unionized plants contrast with the practices found in three Japanese unionized plants, where integrated skills, middle-up-down decision making led by assistant and first-line supervisors, and an informal and one-channel conflict settlement procedure are used.     

Estimating the foreclosure effect of exclusive dealing: Evidence from the entry of specialty beer producers

This paper estimates an entry model to study the effect of exclusive dealing between Anheuser Busch and its distributors on rival brewers' entry decisions and consumer surplus. The entry model accounts for post-entry demand conditions and strategic spillover effects. I recover a brewer's fixed costs using a two-step estimator and find spillover effects on brewers' entry decisions. I find that a brewer has higher fixed costs at locations where Anheuser Busch employ exclusive distributors, but the effect is only statistically significant in certain local areas. The estimates also show that a brewer is less likely to enter a location that is farther from its brewery, has lower expected demand, or is smaller in store size. I implement counterfactual experiments to study the effect of banning exclusive contracts between Anheuser Busch and its distributors. The results show that the welfare improvement associated with banning such contracts is very small.     

The Effect of Time Use in Explaining Male–Female Productivity Differences Among Economists

This study examines the opportunity cost of non‐research responsibilities on research output. Using a sample of early career faculty members who received their Ph.D. in economics, we consider the effect of two dimensions of time use on research output: (1) time allocation, or how time is divided between research and other duties and (2) time concentration, or how research time is distributed during the academic year relative to summer months. This second dimension has not been used in prior studies on research productivity; however, the inherent delays in the publication process as well as start‐up costs may imply that concentrating research time exclusively in the summer months reduces research output. We find that both dimensions of time use are significant predictors of peer‐reviewed publications and that time concentration is a significant predictor of submissions. We find gender differences in both dimensions of time use, which are attributable to gender differences in employment at research institutions and on‐going childcare responsibilities.     

PRICES,SPATIAL COMPETITION AND HETEROGENEOUS PRODUCERS: AN EMPIRICAL TEST*

Homogeneous‐producer models attribute lower prices in denser markets solely to lower optimal markups. I argue here that when producers have different production costs, competition‐driven selection on costs also reduces prices. This selection mechanism can be distinguished from the homogenous‐producer case because it implies that higher density leads not only to lower average prices, but to declines in upper‐bound prices and price dispersion as well. I find empirical support for this mechanism in the prices of ready‐mixed concrete plants. I also show these findings do not simply reflect lower factor prices in dense markets, but result instead because dense‐market producers are more efficient.     

The Effects of Teachers’ Unions on the Gender Pay Gap among U.S. Public School Teachers

This study examines the effect of teachers’ unions on the gender pay gap among teachers under various legal environments, using nationally representative district–teacher matched data. To identify union effects, I employ propensity score matching, considering both contractual status and teacher union density in each district as a treatment. I find that teachers’ unions significantly reduce the gender pay gap, and the union effects vary by legal environment. I also find that unions reduce teacher attrition for female teachers, but not for male teachers, thereby decreasing the gender pay gap by helping female teachers accumulate experience.     

What did unions do for union workers during the COVID-19 pandemic?

This research examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on labour market outcomes of union workers, based on nationally representative data. I employ the difference-in-difference estimation to identify the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the employment, labour earnings and other labour market outcomes of union workers, relative to non-union workers. I find that, compared to non-union workers, union workers experienced greater job security, and the pre-pandemic union wage premium remained largely unchanged during the pandemic. There exists a large heterogeneity in the union effect on employment and real wages by worker characteristic. I also find that union workers, compared to non-union workers, were less likely to work remotely but more likely to receive pay for hours not worked due to COVID-19. The results suggest that unions provided workers with employment stability and an economic buffer during the pandemic-led recession.     

Unions and the Duration of Workers' Compensation Claims

This paper examines the effect of union status on workers' compensation claim duration in Canada. I find that unionized workers have shorter claims than nonunionized workers and that relatively little of this difference can be attributed to differences in worker or job characteristics. I interpret this as being consistent with a strong union effect that reduces union member's claim duration. Plausible explanations for this finding and directions for future research are also discussed.