Reforming Tariffs and Subsidies in International Trade

This paper analyzes unilateral and multilateral reform of ad valorem tariffs and subsidies. The paper shows that under substitutability, extensive subsidization of exports is required for an increase in the lowest tariff rate to raise economic welfare. The paper derives also conditions for when a radial reduction of ad valorem tariffs and subsidies may fail to raise economic welfare.     

Public Spending on Industries,Private Investment and the Timing of International Trade Policy Changes

This paper incorporates public spending on industries (in terms of a durable public intermediate good) into a two-country, two-period, and two-sector, model with international labour mobility. The relationship between international trade policies, private investment, and public spending on industries has been examined. Due to international labour mobility, a policy change in one country also affect the relevant variables in the other country. The timing of the policy change is shown to be ciritical. [H30, F20]     

Excel Models for International Trade Theory and Policy: An Online Resource

URL: http://sites.google.com/site/jgilberteconomics/Home/excel/     

隐形碳关税对国际贸易的影响与启示

文章基于隐形碳关税的形式,就隐形碳关税对国际贸易的影响进行了系统的分析,结果发现,以碳标签、碳足迹、国际生产标准等为代表的隐形碳关税措施对国际贸易的影响比碳关税措施的影响要更加突出,不仅提高了出口方的出口成本,更是使得出口方产品及服务市场注入受限,甚至还影响到发展中经济体的低碳贸易话语权的丧失.研究结论认为:中国应该以低碳外贸体系构建为主线来规避隐形碳关税壁垒,推进低碳外贸体系构建以促进我国低碳经济发展及外贸结构优化.据此,文章建议通过强化立法保障,强化国际合作完善隐形碳关税治理机制,利用好GATT例外条款,大力发展低碳技术及推进区域价值链体系建设来构筑中国低碳外贸体系,以期为中国低碳外贸体系的建立提供理论依据.     

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.     

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.     

International Trade and the Environment: Theoretical and Policy Linkages

I review and extend three approaches to trade and environmental policies: competitive general equilibrium, oligopoly and monopolistic competition. The first two have surprisingly similar implications: deviations from first-best rules are justified only by constraints on policy choice (which motivates what I call a “single dividend” approach to environmental policy), and taxes and emissions standards differ in ways which reflect the Le Chatelier principle. I also show how environmental taxes may lead to a catastrophic relocation of industry in the presence of agglomeration effects, although not necessarily if there is a continuum of industries which differ in pollution intensity. *An earlier version was presented as an invited plenary lecture to the European Association for Environmental and Resource Economics Conference, Oslo, 1999.     

对外贸易对经济增长的贡献：理论与现实

通过梳理各种理论观点和国内外实证研究的结果,结合东亚发展的经验,认为在中国目前的经济发展阶段,对外贸易对经济增长的长期影响通过影响国内资本的存量、劳动力质量以及技术进步而发生作用,在短期内则主要通过出口扩大有效需求而发生作用。     

International Duopoly, Tariff Policy and the Superiority of Free Trade

This paper addresses the effectiveness of tariff policy in the long-run production framework in which decisions must be made about plant size and the level of output to be produced by foreign duopolists competing with each other in the importing country's market. We consider two types of tariff regime, discriminatory and uniform, and show that the importing country's welfare is unambiguously higher in the uniform tariff case. We consider free trade in the same production framework and show that, as the long-run capacity decision becomes increasingly relevant relative to the short-run quantity decision, free trade dominates tariffs in welfare rankings.
JEL Classification Number: F1.     

Domestic Trade and Transport Costs in International Trade Theory

This paper examines the effects that domestic trade and transport margins have on international trade and the consequences for the central trade theorems. Specifically, the Heckscher-Ohlin-Samuelson model is expanded to include a third industry that produces the nontraded domestic services in transportation, warehousing, wholesaling and retailing required to market goods to final purchasers. It is found that the domestic margins probably impose substantial natural trade barriers and that they can cause the central trade theorems (factor-price equalization, Stolper-Samuelson, and Rybczynski) to fail. [F11]     

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.     

Revisiting the Relevance of International Trade Theory

Probably one of the most controversial contributions to the literature of international trade theory was offered by the late social economist John Culbertson. In his view, low wage competition among corporations in a world characterized by capital mobility and massive trade deficits undermines the foundation trade theory based on David Ricardo’s celebrated notion of comparative advantage. Instead, there are several good reasons to believe that international trade with China, India, Vietnam, etc. will be governed by absolute advantage. The current essay is dedicated to the virtually ignored work of Culbertson, and it is meant as an invitation for social economists to critically evaluate the argument and in the process make an attempt to point out where it goes wrong.

绿色贸易大潮下拓展对外贸易的宏观对策

绿色贸易已成为国际贸易领域势不可挡的趋势 ,世界各国特别是发达国家广泛采取了与贸易有关的环保措施 ,影响中国对外贸易中的市场准入和竞争力。在此背景下拓展对外贸易 ,从宏观上看可有多种举措 ,突出的三点包括 :国际合作中维护中国的权益、培育绿色经济和绿色消费者、通过出口产品结构绿色化提高国际竞争力。     

战略性贸易政策的理论及其在中国的实践

战略性贸易政策是随着战后国际贸易发展而产生出来的一种新的贸易保护理论,它引入了不完全竞争的国际市场结构这一事实作为其基本假设,论述了政府的政策性介入的合理性。实践中的战略贸易政策在各个不同的国家效果不同,所以对这种政策的成功并没有达成共识。不过,有选择地应用战略性贸易政策仍然对我国的贸易政策有重要的借鉴意义。     

国际贸易理论发展综述

国际贸易理论的发展可大致分为古典、现代、当代和前沿四个阶段，本文对这四个阶段的研究观点予以综述如下。