Campaign Contributions and Agricultural Subsidies

This article examines the influence of campaign contributions on agricultural subsidies. Empirical results revealed that rent-seeking works, i.e. contributions, influence agricultural subsidies in the manner they best serve contributors' economic interests. Eliminating campaign contributions would significantly decrease agricultural subsidies, hurt farm groups, benefit consumers and taxpayers, and increase social welfare by approximately $5.5 billion. Although contributions are not the only determinants of agricultural subsidies, investment returns to farm PAC contributors are quite high ($1 in contributions brings about $2,000 in policy transfers). In fact, the results are in sharp contrast to the "truthful contributions" assumption of the Grossman–Helpman model.     

Campaign Contributions and the Desirability of Full Disclosure Laws

In a signaling game model of costly political campaigning in which a candidate is dependent on a donor for campaign funds it is verified whether the electorate may benefit from campaign contributions being directly observed. By purely focusing on the informational role of campaign contributions the model seems somewhat biased against the potential benefits of direct observation. Still, the conclusion can be drawn that directly observable contributions allow for more information being revealed in equilibrium. Using this result, from an informational perspective a case can be built for the desirability of full disclosure laws.     

Co-evolution of Preferences and Information in Simple Games of Trust

In standard rational choice modelling decisions are made according to given information and preferences. In the model presented here the `information technology' of individual decision-makers as well as their preferences evolve in a dynamic process. In this process decisions are made rationally by players who differ in their informational as well as in their preference type. Relative success of alternative decisions feeds back on the type composition of the population which in turn influences rational decision-making. An indirect evolutionary analysis of an elementary yet important basic game of trust shows that under certain parameter constellations the population dynamics of the evolutionary process specify a unique completely mixed rest point. However, as opposed to previous studies of preference formation in the game of trust there is no convergence to but only circumventing the rest point if the informational status of individuals evolves rather than being chosen strategically.     

贸易政策不确定性与公司现金股利决策

文章以2003-2019年A股制造业上市公司为样本,研究宏观贸易政策不确定性对公司现金股利决策的影响.研究发现:贸易政策不确定性上升时,公司支付现金股利的意愿和水平会明显下降;这种负面影响与公司风险承担能力、内部治理水平均相关,说明行为同时受风险预防动机和代理动机驱动.据此,文章认为,当外部贸易环境较不确定时,既要增强公司产业链上下游协调能力和提升企业家信心,也要加强外部监管、引导公司实施积极平稳的现金股利政策,进而提升资本市场活力和吸引力.     

Learning-by-Doing and Strategic Trade Policy

The paper models international rivalry between a domestic firm that is going through a learning-by-doing phase, and a mature foreign rival. It is shown that the optimal production subsidy for the domestic firm depends on the degree of strategic sophistication of the foreign firm. Optimal production subsidy rules are derived under various scenarios. They are shown to be very sensitive to the specification of the game between the domestic and the foreign firms. Whether the optimal subsidy should decrease over time depends on the strategic sophistication of the foreign firm.     

Japanese Contributions to the Theory of International Trade

This paper outlines a number of significant Japanese contributions to the theory of international trade in the postwar period, and identifies some of their characteristic topics and methods. It then seeks to explain these characteristics, with reference to Japan's intellectual and cultural heritage, its pressing national priorities, and the situation of the Japanese economist within Japanese society and the economics profession internationally. It is argued that despite these common characteristics we cannot speak meaningfully of a Japanese school of trade theory, although there is a characteristically Japanese approach to trade policy. Finally, some reasons for the neglect of Japanese contributions are explored.
JEL Classification Numbers: B20, F19.     

Strategic Trade Policy and Vertical Structure

We introduce intermediaries into the Brander-Spencer model of strategic trade policy. A key finding is that in regimes involving independent retailers, output competition and linear pricing (and two-part tariffs under certain restrictions), the optimal policy involves an export tax instead of a subsidy. If firms commit to vertical structure before governments commit to policy then under output competition firms choose integration, whereas if policy precedes structure then at least one firm chooses separation. Under price competition separation is a dominant strategy regardless of whether the structure decision is made before or after the policy decision.     

战略贸易政策新进展与发展中国家贸易政策

通过对战略贸易政策在贸易的政治经济学、不确定性、不完全承诺和不完全信息等四个方面的新进展进行讨论,得出结论:新贸易理论的新进展使得脱胎于发达国家的战略贸易政策更加接近发展中国家市场经常失灵的现实,从而对发展中国家的贸易政策有重要的指导意义。     

贸易政策、增长和就业

直到现在,理论模型还去无法把贸易政策与更快的均衡增长联系起来,而且,实证文献有严重的数据方面的问题,因此,经济学家们还在贸易政策与经济运行的关系上争论不休。但是,最近的内生增长理论已经提供了更坚实的理论基础。有越来越多的证据表明,在外向型经济中,新技术能更快地被采用,外向型的贸易政策与储蓄率之间可能还是存在着某些联系的。而且,许多研究者进行的实证分析表明,在越开放的经济中,增长速度越快,创造的就业机会越多。所以,外向型贸易政策对增长、就业可能起正面的作用。     

Mergers and Trade Policy under Oligopoly

For an oligopolistic industry, the effects of mergers on the domestic country's optimal trade policy are analyzed. If the domestic country pursues an optimal trade policy then it will always lose as a result of a foreign merger. The optimal domestic response to a foreign merger is to decrease (increase) the tariff if demand is concave (convex) and to increase the production subsidy. The foreign merger reduces foreign welfare when the domestic country pursues its optimal trade policy. The optimal domestic response to a domestic merger is to leave the tariff unchanged and to increase the production subsidy.     

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.     

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.     

Model Uncertainty, Optimal Monetary Policy and the Preferences of the Fed

Monetary policy in the US is characterized by a substantial degree of inertia. While in principle this may well be the outcome of an optimizing central bank behaviour, the ability of any derived policy rule to match the data relies on so large weights for interest rate smoothing into policy makers' preferences as to be theoretically flawed. In this paper we investigate whether such a puzzle can be interpreted as resulting from the concern of monetary authorities for potential misspecifications of the macroeconomic dynamics. Accordingly, we propose a novel thick modelling approach that incorporates model uncertainty into the identification of central bank's preferences. The thick robust policy rule shows the kind of smoothness observed in the data without resorting to implausible values for the preference parameters.     

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.     

Distributional Preferences and the Incidence of Costs and Benefits in Climate Change Policy

We explore the relationship between willingness to pay (WTP) for climate change mitigation and distributional preferences, by which we mean individuals’ opinions about who should be responsible for climate change prevention and whether the share of climate change impacts borne by the poor is a cause for concern. We use 1,770 responses to an online stated preference survey. The domestic costs in our survey’s policy choice scenarios are expressed as a set of randomized shares across four different payment vehicles, and the international cost shares are randomized across four groups of countries. We also elicit respondents’ perceptions of the likely regressivity of climate change impacts under a policy of business-as-usual. WTP is higher when larger cost shares are borne by parties deemed to bear a greater responsibility for mitigation, and when respondents believe (and care) that the impacts of climate change may be borne disproportionately by the world’s poor. That WTP for an environmental policy depends on the distributional consequences of the policy is an unsettling result: efficiency assessments are typically assumed to be separate from equity considerations in most benefit-cost analyses.