Tariff retaliation versus financial compensation in the enforcement of international trade agreements

We analyze whether financial compensation is preferable to the WTO's current dispute settlement system that permits injured member countries to impose retaliatory tariffs. We show that, ex-post, monetary fines are more efficient than tariffs in terms of granting compensation to injured parties but fines suffer from an enforcement problem since they must be paid by the violating country. If fines must ultimately be supported by the threat of tariffs, they fail to yield a more cooperative outcome than the use of tariffs alone. Furthermore, the exchange of bonds between symmetric countries also does not improve enforcement relative to retaliatory tariffs.     

Antidumping and retaliation threats

We propose and test two ways in which retaliation threats may dampen the antidumping (AD) activity we observe. First, the threat of retaliatory AD actions may make a domestic industry less likely to name a foreign import source in an AD petition. Second, the prospect of a GATT/WTO trade dispute may make government agencies less likely to rule positive in their AD decision. Using a nested logit framework, we find evidence that both retaliation threats substantially affect US AD activity from 1980 through 1998.     

论世贸组织《反倾销协定》若干特点

世贸组织《反倾销协定》具有理论依据缺失、明确与模糊的法律条款并存、同时许可与管制成员方采取反倾销措施等特点。基于《反倾销协定》的以上特点,尽管反倾销措施具有若干负面效果,文章认为它仍然将继续成为各成员方保护国内产业、消除国际贸易自由化所带来的消极影响的重要手段,同时有关反倾销的争论也将持续下去。     

基于报复角度的国际反倾销分析

国内外学者通过研究发现一国(地区)遭受反倾销后,有可能对别国(地区)进行报复性反倾销,这样会导致国际反倾销的日益增加。我们通过整理WTO公布的1995-2010年间的反倾销数据,从反倾销的国别或地区、行业和年份等方面进行了研究,认为:印度、美国、欧盟和阿根廷的反倾销报复能力比较强,已经成为全球反倾销的主要国家(地区),中国和韩国的反倾销报复能力比较弱,已经成为全球被反倾销的主要国家(地区)。进一步地,我们将主要反倾销国家(地区)与主要被反倾销国家(地区)之间的反倾销案件进行比较后,认为一国(地区)遭受反倾销特别是来自于主要反倾销国家(地区)的反倾销时,若没有进行有效的反倾销报复,其他国家(地区)也会加入对该国(地区)的反倾销队伍中来,使其面临更多的反倾销。     

International trade agreements between countries of asymmetric size

This paper analyzes how changes in the structure and environment of trade agreements between a small and a large country affect the efficient frontier of those self-enforcing agreements and hence, negotiation outcomes. Using the autarky punishment instead of the interior Nash punishment may provide the small country with greater bargaining power. Negotiating direct transfers under free trade instead of reciprocal tariff reductions improves the worst possible negotiation outcome for the small country. The existence of irreversible investment may strengthen (weaken) the small country’s bargaining power under the interior Nash (autarky) punishment scheme.     

Recurrent trade agreements and the value of external enforcement

This paper presents a theory of dynamic trade agreements in which external institutions, such as the WTO, play a central role in supporting credible enforcement. In our model, countries engage in ongoing negotiations, and, as a consequence, cooperative agreements become unsustainable in the absence of external enforcement institutions. By using mechanisms such as delays in dispute resolution and direct penalties, enforcement institutions can restore incentives for cooperation, despite the lack of coercive power. The occurrence of costly trade disputes, and the feasibility of mechanisms such as escape clauses, depend on the degree to which enforcement institutions can verify, and condition on, events that may lead to trade disputes.     

The effects of relationship quality on customer retaliation

This research examines the effects of relationship quality (RQ) on customers' desires to retaliate after service failures. We posit that the effects of RQ are contingent upon the attributions customers make about the firm’s controllability over a service failure. Two competing hypotheses are examined and reconciled. The “love is blind” hypothesis posits that when low controllability is inferred, high RQ customers experience a lesser desire for retaliation than low RQ customers. On the other hand, the “love becomes hate” hypothesis specifies that when high controllability is inferred, high RQ customers experience a greater desire for retaliation than low RQ customers. The hypotheses are tested with a survey-based design and a partial least squares (PLS) model that incorporates a multiplicative latent construct.     

出口税的世贸组织规则及其经济效应分析

本文对出口税的世贸组织规则作了完整的分析。出口税没有列入减让表,世贸组织的成员方不承担减让义务,也不存在通知的义务;出口税被列入“应通知措施的指示性清单”,但名存实亡;世贸组织的现行规则对出口税几乎不存在具体的纪律约束;但中国在入世时的承诺构成了中国应遵守的世贸组织规则的一部分。出口税经济效应的分析是复杂的,这一分析过程要考虑产品的需求弹性和供给弹性、产品的替代和互补、产业链的前向联系和后向联系。本论文对中国实施部分纺织品从量征税方式加征出口关税具有认识意义。     

世贸组织反倾销协议修改中的热点问题分析

我国作为世贸组织正式成员参与世贸组织谈判以来,介入最深与我国利益最为密切的就是反倾销协议的规则谈判。认真研究世贸组织的规则修改,在有关谈判中表明自己的鲜明观点,是摆在我们面前的重要任务。文章重点分析了在规则谈判中的几个热点问题,各方提出的观点以及我国可能的立场,以供进一步的研究参考。     

Auctioning countermeasures in the WTO

We offer a first formal analysis of auctioning retaliation rights within the WTO. We show that the auctions exhibit externalities among bidders, and we characterize equilibrium bidder behavior under alternative auction formats. If the violating country is prevented from bidding to retire the right of retaliation against it, then the possibility of “auction failure” arises, whereby no bids are made despite positive valuation by bidders. If the violating country is instead permitted to bid, then auction failure is precluded, and indeed the right of retaliation is always retired. We evaluate these different auction formats from normative (revenue, compliance, efficiency) standpoints.     

Strategic trade policy in the presence of reputation spillovers

With the emergence of North–South intra-industry trade in products where consumers value quality, exporting countries potentially face significant barriers to entry. Due to the existence of asymmetric information about new products in a foreign market, the producer's reputation becomes an important factor in determining whether consumers choose to make a purchase. The purpose of this paper is to add learning externalities across multiple products to a model of endogenous firm entry and quality in order to examine the implications for commercial intervention. Building on the work of Mayer (1984) and Grossman and Horn (1988), we introduce learning across multiple products in the presence of incomplete information. If the reputation of the initial entrants from a country is poor, it raises the informational barriers to entry. Consequently, strategic trade policy depends on both the quality choice of firms entering the market for exports as well as the degree of product interrelatedness. In the presence of high and lowquality producers, across-the-board subsidization hinders rather than promotes exports in developing countries.     

Antidumping, signaling and cheap talk

In the United States, there is evidence that domestic non-filing firms do not always support dumping/countervailing duty investigations. Absent other factors, domestic firms have an unambiguous incentive to support petitions filed by other domestic producers. We argue that in cases where the non-complainant firm is not a significant importer or exporter, the most plausible explanation is that non-support acts as a costly signal of private information. Extending the model to allow firms to engage in cheap talk, such signaling can take place even in the absence of an investigation. This result provides an explanation for the puzzling observation that fewer antidumping investigations are filed than one would expect.     

Informed trade in spot foreign exchange markets: an empirical investigation

This paper presents new evidence on information asymmetries in inter-dealer FX markets. We employ a new USD/DEM data set covering the activities of multiple dealers over one trading week. We utilise and extend the VAR structure introduced in Hasbrouck [J. Finance 46(1) (1991) 179] to quantify the permanent effects of trades on quotes and show that asymmetric information accounts for around 60% of average bid-ask spreads. Further, 40% of all permanent price variation is shown to be due to transaction-related information. Finally, we uncover strong time-of-day effects in the information carried by trades that are related to the supply of liquidity to D2000-2; at times when liquidity supply is high, individual trades have small permanent effects on quotes but the proportion of permanent quote variation explained by overall trading activity is relatively high. In periods of low liquidity supply the converse is true—individual trades have large permanent price effects but aggregate trading activity contributes little to permanent quote evolution.     

Endogenous trade policy and lobby formation: an application to the free-rider problem

This paper develops a model in which tariffs are determined through bargaining between a utility maximizing policy maker and an industry lobby. Individual firms only contribute to the lobbying effort if it is in their own self-interest so that both trade policies and lobby formation are endogenous. By introducing bargaining between the industry and the government, the paper provides microfoundations for the tariff-formation function approach taken by many authors in the political economy literature. Applied to the free-rider problem, the model identifies general conditions under which increasing the number of firms in an industry makes cooperation between them more difficult.     

WTO棉花争议案中交叉报复的研究

鉴于中国与贸易伙伴贸易摩擦的增多,深入研究WTO争端解决机制及案例对加入世贸不久的中国来说,如何更好地利用WTO争端解决机制具有重要意义。对交叉报复和对报复要求仲裁的理解是对WTO争端解决机制进行深入研究的两个重要方面。     

The trade structure effects of endogenous regional trade agreements

This paper formulates an empirical model to estimate the impact of endogenous new regional trade agreement (RTA) membership on trade structure. The likelihood of new RTA membership is influenced by economic fundamentals such as country size, factor endowments, and trade and investment costs. In a sample of country-pairs covering mainly the OECD economies we find a particularly strong effect of endogenous RTAs on intra-industry trade in a difference-in-difference analysis based on matching techniques. The associated trade volume effects are similar to the ones found in previous research on the effects of endogenous RTAs. Overall, this indicates that RTA membership might reduce inter-industry trade not only in relative but also in absolute terms and that the trade volume effect is due to the associated growth in trade within industries.     

Heterogeneous responses of firms to trade protection

This paper estimates the effect of antidumping protection on the productivity of domestic import-competing firms. Two key results emerge. First, the productivity of the average firm receiving protection moderately improves, but this is never sufficient to close the productivity gap with firms never involved in antidumping cases. Second, allowing for firm heterogeneity reveals that domestic firms with relatively low initial productivity - laggard firms - have productivity gains during protection, while firms with high initial productivity - frontier firms - experience productivity losses during protection. These results are consistent with recent theories showing that trade policy affects firms differently depending on their initial productivity.     

美国反倾销因果关系的五种裁定方法分析

倾销同产业损害之间因果关系的存在,构成实施反倾销措施的必要条件之一。反倾销现行规则关于因果关系认定标准的宽松界定,导致具体裁定过程往往无法有效地证明因果关系的存在。本文以美国为例,分析了其在反倾销实践中使用的五种因果关系裁定方法。该五种方法均存在一定的缺陷导致因果关系的裁定失去了实际意义     

Economic determinants of free trade agreements

The purpose of this study is to provide the first systematic empirical analysis of the economic determinants of the formation of free trade agreements (FTAs) and of the likelihood of FTAs between pairs of countries using a qualitative choice model. We develop this econometric model based upon a general equilibrium model of world trade with two factors of production, two monopolistically-competitive product markets, and explicit intercontinental and intracontinental transportation costs among multiple countries on multiple continents. The empirical model correctly predicts, based solely upon economic characteristics, 85% of the 286 FTAs existing in 1996 among 1431 pairs of countries and 97% of the remaining 1145 pairs with no FTAs.     

Economic integration agreements and the margins of international trade

One of the main policy sources of trade–cost changes is the formation of an economic integration agreement (EIA), which potentially affects an importing country's welfare. This paper: (i) provides the first evidence using gravity equations of both intensive and extensive (goods) margins being affected by EIAs employing a panel data set with a large number of country pairs, product categories, and EIAs from 1962 to 2000; (ii) provides the first evidence of the differential (partial) effects of various “types” of EIAs on these intensive and extensive margins of trade; and (iii) finds a novel differential “timing” of the two margins' (partial) effects with intensive-margin effects occurring sooner than extensive-margin effects, consistent with recent theoretical predictions. The results are robust to correcting for potential sample-selection, firm-heterogeneity, and reverse causality biases.