Global influences on UK manufacturing prices: 1970-2000

We introduce the first consistent series of domestic-product and related import price indices at the industry level for the UK, using the data to analyse both domestic and international determinants of UK manufactured product prices. Foreign influences on UK prices in domestic markets are always present, but domestic cost movements dominate. We show that the pass-through of world-price, tariff and exchange rate changes into product prices is partial in general and varies markedly between product categories. Standard tariff and exchange rate theories overstate price responses to global pricing determinants and fail to allow for variation between industrial sectors. Such theories can mislead when used for policy analysis and prediction.     

The Steady Inflation Rate of Economic Growth

This paper considers the existence of a path of GDP corresponding to steady inflation in the prices of domestic goods. We estimate the steady inflation rate of growth, denoted the SIRG, at a little over 4 per cent p.a. in the post-float period in Australia. Changes in inflation are modelled as a nonlinear combination of growth and changes, in import price inflation. Because import price inflation is more volatile than overall inflation, policy that targets overall inflation may require growth to fluctuate considerably, whereas growth can be steady if the target is steady inflation of domestic goods' prices.     

Strategic competition and optimal parallel import policy

Abstract In a two‐country Hotelling type duopoly model of price competition, we show that parallel import (PI) policy can act as an instrument of strategic trade policy. The home firm’s profit is higher when it cannot price discriminate internationally if and only if the foreign market is sufficiently bigger than the domestic one. The key mechanism in the model is that the home firm’s incentive to keep its domestic price close to the optimal monopoly price affects its behavior during price competition abroad. We also analyze the welfare implications of PI policies and show that our key insights extend to quantity competition.     

The Speed and Stability of Price Adjustment in Australian Manufacturing*

A model of industry speed of price adjustment is derived from firm pricing behaviour. The model is applied to quarterly two‐digit Australian manufacturing data for the period 1985 (Q3) to 2002 (Q3). The results suggest that the industry speed of price adjustment is positively related to the average size of large firms within the industry and is negatively related to industry concentration. We also find that import share has a role in attenuating the effects of industry concentration and that growth in a moving average of real gross domestic product reduces the speed of price adjustment. Calculated industry speeds of price adjustment are both stable across the period of examination and small, suggesting that manufacturing prices are sticky.     

Domestic trade protection in vertically-related markets

We consider trade policy in a setting where home country firms are fully dependent on vertically-integrated foreign firms for supplies of a key input. We find that vertically-integrated firms' strategic considerations play an important role and that, in particular, a tariff on final goods may either increase or decrease the domestic price of final goods. The import of final goods is always taxed to extract and shift rents from foreign firms, while the import of intermediate goods can be either taxed or subsidized. The market structure is shown to be an important consideration when making trade policy.     

The effects of domestic rice market interventions outside business-as-usual conditions for imported rice prices

The Philippine government intervenes in the domestic rice market through the imposition of import tariffs and the provision of producer and consumer subsidies. While policymakers are aware that these programmes come with allocative efficiency costs, they justify the programmes on the grounds that they insulate the domestic economy from unexpected price spikes in the international rice market. An interesting matter for policy evaluation is to quantify the insulation benefit that the programmes provide in circumstances of sudden severe import price spikes. To examine this question, we undertake a dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) simulation in which the Philippines is subject to an external rice price shock. We find that the insulation benefit of the support programmes under a 2008-like event is worth approximately 0.10% of real consumption. However, the cost of insuring against these price spikes is significant. We estimate the annual cost of the rice market interventions at approximately 0.40% of real consumption.     

ENTRY AND IMPORT QUOTA

An import quota set stricter than the free trade level is quite common for the domestic entry protection. However, this paper shows that as the products are vertically differentiated, an import quota that is simply set at the original free trade level could be effective on entrant protection. This quota policy also improves both consumer surplus and total domestic welfare, which is in sharp contrast to the implications of existing literature. Our result suggests that an import quota has a stronger protection effect on domestic production if the domestic and foreign products are vertically differentiated.     

Distortions to agricultural incentives: Evidence from Nigerian value chains

Understanding how policies affect price transmission and incentives for producers and consumers along the complete value chain is a relevant research question due to the more globalized structure of agricultural value chains. In particular, Nigerian agricultural value chains have been targeted by a number of policy decisions. We analyze the import‐oriented palm oil value chain and the export‐oriented cacao value chain, estimating the price distortions from policies and their implications for production incentives at the regional level. For palm oil, due to protective trade policies and domestic initiatives, the nominal rate of protection (NRP) at the farmgate for palm oil producers shows that producers have been protected. NRPs at the border for cacao beans and cocoa products are negative, which may be due to a quality gap, the export market structure, and the concentration of buyers in global markets. Negative NRPs at the farmgate are seen for all regions, showing disincentives in the cacao beans export market reverberate through the domestic market despite domestic support policies. In both value chains, NRPs at farmgate vary across regions partially due to regional policy frameworks and partially due to local conditions impacting price transmission.     

Consumption opportunities and the real value of the external debt

Developing countries have, in the period since the oil shock of 1973–1974, built up large external indebtedness. At the same time world inflation has in good part eroded the real value of existing debts. But the measurement of the inflation effects on real debt depend critically on which among a number of deflators is selected. The deflators proposed in this context have traditionally been export prices, import prices or prices in world trade. This paper argues that the correct deflator is the domestic consumer price index. Using the consumer price index as a debt deflator it is readily shown that conventional results in trade theory are recovered in the presence of external indebtedness: The income effect of an export price increase is proportional to the level of exports, the income effect of an import price increase is proportional to the level of imports. Real income, using a comprehensive income measure, is equal to the value of domestic output less the real value of real interest payments on external debt.     

Market collusion and the politics of protection

This paper investigates the relationship between trade and competition policy within a model where market collusion and protectionist lobbying are themselves related. Collusion and lobbying are modeled as joint products of the same collective effort of firms. In equilibrium, firms cannot achieve greater cooperation in one dimension without reducing it in the other. A trade agreement that limits the effectiveness of lobbying may cause firms to increase market collusion, thereby increasing the domestic price. Thus, international trade agreements may run counter to the goals of competition policy. On the other side, a more restrictive competition policy is shown to either reduce the domestic price or reduce import protection. Thus, competition policy tends to promote trade policy goals. The reason is that restrictive competition policy undermines collusion at the source—it decreases the per-firm benefit to collusion relative to the gains from deviating—reducing firm cooperation in both dimensions.     

Import sensitive products and perverse tariff‐rate quota liberalization

Abstract This paper shows that a Tariff‐Rate‐Quota's (TRQ) minimum access expansion can perversely trigger domestic price increases. Often, TRQs have prohibitive over‐quota tariffs to mimic import quotas in providing minimum market access. In the WTO's Doha Round, it is likely that countries using TRQs will avoid aggressive tariff reductions if they increase the quota portion of TRQs. We show that when the import price lies between the unit cost of production and the price received by domestic upstream firms, an increase in import quota as a share of domestic production may cause an increase in the domestic retail price.     

人民币汇率、国内总需求与通货膨胀——基于汇率传递理论的实证研究

通货膨胀一直是中国政府直接面对而又必须谨慎处理的经济问题。本文以汇率传递理论为视角,运用自回归分布滞后模型（ARDL）考察了1980-2010年人民币汇率、国内总需求、世界商品价格与通货膨胀之间的长期均衡和短期调整关系。长期看来,人民币升值并未像国际经济学理论描述的那样可以抑制通货膨胀,相反却显著地抬高了国内价格水平;中国通货膨胀的成因具有需求拉上的特点,且不存在明显的世界通货膨胀的输入途径。短期看来,中国通货膨胀的动态调整具有明显的滞后特征,且由短期变动向长期均衡调整的速度较快。     

中国大米进口波动成因分析：基于1992～2012年的数据

大米对中国粮食安全举足轻重,由于主张“坚持立足于基本靠国内保障粮食供给”,中国必须关注大米进口波动状况。基于1992～2012年的数据,本文利用CMS模型对中国大米进口波动成因分析的结果表明,由国内开放政策、人均收入、人均大米消费量和大米价格等宏观经济因素所决定的进口引力效应对中国大米进口波动所产生影响最大。与此同时。世界大米贸易的总体供求水平以及市场分布变化对中国大米进口波动也产生一定程度的影响。     

Second-best trade policies in Cournot oligopoly

In this paper we study the optimal import policy in an oligopolistic market with a given number of quantity-setting firms. In the absence of fixed costs, we show that if the policy instrument is an import quota, the optimal policy is either free trade or autarky, while if the instrument is a tariff the optimal policy is neither free trade nor autarky. In the case of fixed costs, we show that contrary to the traditional protectionist argument, a restrictive import policy might increase domestic welfare by increasing domestic consumers' surplus, instead of increasing domestic profits.     

Optimal Policy Intervention To Reduce Import Dependence

Should a country wish to reduce its dependence on imports of a certain commodity, an import tariff is typically recommended as the first-best (lowest-cost) policy instrument for achieving this non-economic objective. This note shows that while this is correct if the objective is to restrain imports to a certain quantity, it is not correct if the target is to reduce imports to a certain percentage of domestic consumption. In the latter case, a tariff-funded subsidy to producers is also required, the extent of which is larger the smaller the domestic price elasticities of demand and supply for the commodity. [410]     

Components of effective devaluation and the domestic rate of inflation: The case of Israel

Developing countries have frequently resorted to effective devaluation by changing either their formal rate of exchange, or by using non-formal components, such as taxes and subsidies. The ensuing increase in the domestic price of imports has inflationary effects. This paper analyses the Israeli experience to investigate the inflationary effects of increases in import prices and alternative methods of devaluation. It is found that formal and non-formal devaluation appear to have the same long-run effects on the price level, but are not the same in timing: A formal devaluation leads more quickly to increases in domestic prices.     

OPTIMAL MONETARY POLICY WITH THE STICKY INFORMATION MODEL OF PRICE ADJUSTMENT: INFLATION OR PRICE‐LEVEL TARGETING?

I investigate the optimal monetary policy in a New Keynesian macroeconomic framework with the sticky information model of price adjustment. The model is solved for optimal policy, and welfare implications of three alternative monetary policy regimes under this optimal policy are compared when there is a cost‐push shock to the economy. These monetary policy regimes are the unconstrained policy, price‐level targeting and inflation targeting regimes. The results illustrate that optimal policy depends on the degree of price stickiness and the persistence of the shock. Inflation targeting emerges as the optimal policy if prices are flexible enough or the shock is persistent enough. However, the unconstrained policy or price‐level targeting might be preferable to inflation targeting if prices are not very flexible and the shock is not very persistent. The results also show that as prices become more flexible, the welfare loss usually gets bigger.     

我国关税调整对广东经济贸易的影响分析

2011年以来,我国对进口关税进行了一系列新的结构性调整。这是我国外贸政策调整和转变的一次具体表现,从我国外贸战略角度看,贸易平衡发展和转型升级是当前我国外贸发展面,晦的紧迫任务。本文收集近年我国关税调整方案及其对广东经济贸易的影响,首先是对近年来我国关税调整政策内容进行了归纳和总结,提炼了关税调整政策的指导思想和主要特征,进而分析了这一系列调整对广东的经济特别是对外贸易增长和发展转型所造成的影响,最后从政府和企业两个层面提供了政策建议。     

外商投资企业与内资企业的竞争与合作关系

与国内企业相比,外商投资企业在企业规模与财务状况、经营指标、技术品牌及政府政策方面均占据一定优势。外商投资企业凭借自身竞争优势,根据国内市场变化不断调整其竞争策略,迈开了扩张步伐,加快了技术更新速度,缩短了价格调整周期,逐步向产业链上下游延伸,同时积极设立地区总部,加强与国内企业的合作,这些对中国市场结构产生了重要的影响。内资企业应审时度势,采取适当策略提升竞争力。     

Access Pricing,Quality Degradation,and Foreclosure in the Internet

Access to both a local and a global network is needed in order to get complete connection to the Internet. The purpose of this article is to examine the interplay between those two networks and how it affects the domestic public policy towards a domestic provider of local access. We find that a cost-oriented regulation is detrimental to domestic welfare, because it shifts profit to the foreign provider of global access. The optimal policy is that the regulator commits itself to set an access price above costs, possibly the same price as in an unregulated market economy. A regulation of the global access price has a non-monotonic effect on domestic welfare, and there is a potential conflict between international and domestic regulation policy.