Eco-labels, Trade and Protectionism

Eco-labels are suspected to serve protectionist purposes. We analyze the choice between an environmental standard and a voluntary eco-label scheme in a partial trade model with one domestic firm and one foreign firm. The environmental standard will only apply to the domestic firm, while both firms can adopt the eco-label. Pollution is production related, and domestic consumers demand products that are produced in an “environmentally friendly” way. Our results show that it may be optimal for the domestic government to introduce an eco-label and get both firms to adopt the label, instead of setting an environmental standard. However, to what extent this policy serves protectionist purposes is ambiguous. In particular, if the willingness to pay for green products is sufficient to cover the pollution abatement costs of the foreign firm, foreign firm profit will increase while domestic firm profit will decrease compared to the outcome with a domestic environmental standard. On the other hand, if the willingness to pay for green products is insufficient, the foreign firm would be better off with a domestic environmental standard.     

The Determinants of Firm Performance and Bribery: Evidence from Manufacturing Firms in Nigeria

This paper uses ordinary least squares with firm effects and Probit regression models to investigate the determinants of firm performance and the likelihood of firms to pay bribes. Results for the manufacturing firms in Nigeria show that skilled workforce, exports, foreign ownership and capital investment influence firm performance. Conversely, poor electricity delivery and difficulty obtaining finance impede firm performance. Total sales and time spent dealing with government regulations increase the likelihood of firms to pay bribes. Surprisingly, foreign firms are as much likely to pay bribes as domestic firms. Policy implications from the findings are important considering that the manufacturing sector assumes an important role in the Lewis theory of economic development.     

Tariffs as Signals of Uncompetitiveness

In this paper, a domestic and a foreign firm compete as Cournot duopolists in the domestic market. The foreign firm has incomplete information about the costs of the domestic firm, but the domestic government and the domestic firm are completely informed. It is shown that the domestic government can use its tariff to signal about the costs of the domestic firm. In the separating equilibrium, the domestic government signals the uncompetitiveness of the domestic firm by setting a lower tariff than is optimal under complete information.     

Host-country policy – commitment or no-commitment: a theoretical analysis

This paper develops a model of foreign entry strategy and examines welfare of the host-country under two situations - (i) where host-country government commits to the tax policy, (ii) where host-country government does not commit to the tax policy. It turns out that under the non-committed government policy the foreign firm does not prefer to hold equity share in the domestic project. The host-country welfare, however, is more under the committed government policy than the non-committed government policy when the foreign firm has sufficiently higher bargaining power. The possibility of technology choice by the foreign firm reduces the range of bargaining power of the foreign firm over which the host-country welfare is more under the committed policy compared to the non-committed policy.     

Environmental Regulation: An Incentive for Foreign Direct Investment

Empirical evidence has so far failed to confirm that lenient environmental regulation attracts investment from polluting firms. In a Cournot duopoly with a foreign firm and a domestic firm, we show that the foreign firm may want to relocate to the domestic country with stricter environmental regulation, when the move raises its rival domestic firm's cost by sufficiently more than its own. The domestic (foreign) country's welfare is (usually) lower with foreign direct investment.     

Vertically related markets, tariffs, and technology adoption

This study considers the effect of trade policy on the time of technology adoption. Home firm is dependent on a foreign vertically integrate firm for supplies of a key input before the technology adoption and can produce the intermediate input after the technology adoption. Both firms compete by Cournot in the home final product market. I show that the decrease in the tariff on final product imports and the increase in the tariff on input imports create incentives for earlier technology adoption by home firm. While maximizing the discounted sum of welfare, the domestic government should protect home firm initially. Further, provided the cost of technology adoption declined sufficiently over time, the domestic government should stimulate the earlier technology adoption by decreasing the tariff on final product imports and increasing the tariff on intermediate product imports.     

Profit Share and Partner Choice in International Joint Ventures

This paper suggests a new approach to the determination of profit allocation between the partners in international joint ventures (IJVs). We also examine the issue of partnership choice. The foreign firm gives a large share of profits to its partner and in return receives a better tax treatment from the host government. Under linearity of costs and demand functions, it would choose the more efficient domestic firm as an IJV partner, and the domestic firms would happily accept the offer of partnership from the foreign firm. However, the host government, under certain situations, may persuade the foreign firm, by a suitable lump‐sum transfer, to form a partnership with the less efficient firm.     

Is Corporate Environmentalism Good for Domestic Welfare?

Many private firms voluntarily care about the environment and declare that their products and production processes are environmentally friendly. This paper shows that corporate environmentalism may reduce the effectiveness of government policies. A simple third‐market trade model with strategic environmental and trade policy is employed, in which an environmentally conscious domestic firm competes with a profit‐maximizing foreign firm. It is shown that even if emission taxes and export subsidies are both available, corporate environmentalism may reduce domestic welfare when pollution is transboundary. In the realistic situation where export subsidies are prohibited, welfare may fall even if pollution is local.     

Technical compatibility and the mode of foreign entry with network externalities

Abstract.  We examine the preferences of a foreign firm and a local government over two modes of foreign direct investment: de novo entry and acquisition of the domestic incumbent. Two crucial features of the model are network externalities and partial incompatibility between the domestic and the foreign technology. The relative welfare impact of the two entry modes depends on the degree of market competition and the strength of the network externality. The clash between the foreign firm's choice and the local government's ranking of the two entry modes can motivate limits on the degree of foreign ownership of the local firm.     

Foreign Direct Investment, Licensing, and Incentives for Innovation

In a two-period duopoly model, this paper considers a foreign firm's choice between licensing and FDI and studies the relative impact of these modes of technology transfer on the incentives for innovation of that firm and its domestic rival. Relative to licensing, FDI limits technology spillovers to the domestic firm but dissipates more rents in the product market. Internalization allows the foreign firm to build on an existing technological advantage. While the local firm develops its best technology if initial licensing is followed by FDI, the foreign firm transfers the most efficient technology under FDI in both periods.     

Welfare Effects of Reducing Home Bias in Government Procurements: A Dynamic Contest Model

This paper models an international contest for government procurement as a dynamic game between a domestic firm and a foreign firm. We show that trade liberalization, in the form of a reduction in bias against the foreign firm, improves both domestic and global welfare if (i) either the foreign firm's profit is sufficiently large or (ii) the initial degree of home bias is sufficiently small. If the initial home bias is large, a small reduction in the bias may reduce welfare.     

Export rivalry,vertically-related markets,and optimal public ownership policy

This paper considers the optimal public ownership policy of an upstream firm which competes with a foreign private rival. Both firms supply a produced input to the domestic and foreign downstream firms that compete in an export market. The paper shows that complete privatization of the domestic upstream firm is never optimal. It will likely be fully nationalized if its market share is high, the domestic downstream firms' market share is low, and the total number of firms in the downstream is large. Simulation results reveal that the public firm's optimal profit margin may be negative and that the government ownership level may exhibit a reswitching phenomenon as the number of domestic downstream firms keeps growing. The paper sheds light on the possibility of using government ownership policy as a pseudo-trade and industrial policy.     

Implicit protectionism via state enterprises and technology transfer from foreign enterprises

We formulate a mixed triopoly in which one state enterprise competes with one domestic and one foreign private enterprise. The private enterprise can transfer its technology to the private rival, which reduces the rival’s production cost. We show that if the privatization policy is endogenous, then the foreign firm voluntarily transfers its technology. We also show that the foreign enterprise may strategically raise its local ownership share. These results suggest that the existence of a state enterprise and its potential future privatization serve as an industrial policy that improves the domestic firm’s competitive advantage relative to the foreign enterprise.     

Welfare effects of competitive lobbying efforts in international oligopoly markets

Conventionally, rent-seeking activities have been considered to deteriorate social welfare and to distort resource allocation. This paper examines whether rent-seeking behavior can improve social welfare by focusing on the welfare effects of firms’ competitive lobbying efforts when governments can impose market entry regulation against foreign firms. We demonstrate that competitive lobbying efforts can improve social welfare when such lobbying efforts are directed to reduce market entry barriers. In addition, social welfare can be maximized when the government shows the maximum sensitivity to the foreign firm's political contributions while maintaining competitive market structure. Moreover, it is shown that the dominant strategy for a domestic firm is to allocate more resources to R&D sectors while it is optimal for foreign firms is to exert more efforts in lobbying to reduce the market entry barriers when a government makes political economic approach in market entry regulations.     

国际多市场寡头条件下的贸易政策和产业政策

国际多市场寡头是Bulow( 1 985)提出的多市场寡头概念在国际贸易领域的自然延伸。在本文中 ,市场之间联系的纽带是本国企业具有规模收益递减的生产技术。本文的主要结论是 ,第一 ,如果本国企业与外国企业在外国市场进行价格竞争 ,那么 ,最优干预组合包括国内生产补贴与出口税 ,它们对本国福利的作用是一致的。第二 ,如果本国企业与外国企业在外国市场进行数量竞争 ,那么 ,最优干预政策组合包括国内生产补贴与出口补贴 ,它们作用于本国福利的方向是不一致的 ,这时 ,本国政府用国内生产补贴执行反托拉斯职能 ,用出口补贴执行利润转移职能。第三 ,作为模型的一个应用 ,本文论证了出口退税政策会加剧国内市场的扭曲 ;而且它不一定能够提高本国福利。     

Lobbying, corruption and “optimal” tariff

This paper explores how a government officer enacts “optimum” import policy when confronting lobbies on trade policies from both domestic and foreign firms in a transition economy. Two results are found: firstly, if the inducement from the foreign firm on the government officer works, then the optimum tariff is negative, that is, import subsidy. However, this subsidy will turn to a positive tariff rate with the increasing lobbying inducement from domestic firms. Secondly, zero tariff duty is not an optimum choice under most circumstances. Besides, an asymmetric result is that when these two firms’ marginal costs are different, the optimum policy is to levy an import tariff on the one whose marginal cost is relatively small, while the other firm will get an import subsidy.     

Optimal Licensing Policy under Vertical Product Differentiation

This paper explores a vertical product differentiation model with a licensing arrangement between a multinational firm with superior technology and a domestic firm with obsolete technology. We find that a subsidy provided by the domestic country's government to the domestic firm to assist with the licensing arrangement is welfare enhancing for the domestic country. Furthermore, both the multinational firm and the domestic country are better off under royalty than under fixed fee licensing. These findings stand in contrast to earlier results in the literature.     

Democratic Accountability,Regulation and Inward Investment Policy

We examine the effect of domestic political accountability on leaders' strategies for attracting foreign direct investment to less developed countries. We consider two policy areas: the tax burden imposed on firms and the regulatory environment in which they operate. We find that democratic governments are more likely to offer relatively lower tax rates to foreign investors, whereas autocratic governments are more likely to offer relatively lax regulation. This result is driven by the greater elasticity of the political survival function to environmental and labor regulations in more democratic countries. Analyses of firm‐level survey data confirm our main theoretical conclusions.     

Protecting consumers through protection: The role of tariff-induced technology transfer

We consider a duopolistic trade model where a tariff induces the foreign firm to transfer its superior technology to the domestic rival. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, such a tariff raises consumers’ surplus relative to the free trade situation. We characterize the optimal tariff with and without precommitment on the part of the local government. Possibility of technology transfer reduces the optimal tariff rate compared to the no-transfer situation.     

Foreign Investment and Endogenous Protection with Protectionist Quid Pro Quo

The literature on quid pro quo foreign direct investment describes how unwarranted investment may be undertaken because of the endogeneity of trade policy. The quid pro quo is that foreign producers, who are exporters to the host economy, invest in return for a liberal trade policy. We describe converse circumstances. The nexus between foreign investment and endogeneity of trade policy is implicit (not explicit as in quid pro quo investment), and a government with socially correct objectives (perhaps imposed by international-agency conditionality) wishes (i) to privatize a domestic firm by sale to a foreign investor who can provide technology improvement for domestic production and (ii) to pursue a liberal trade policy. The government is electorally constrained by needs of political popularity. The outcome is that efficient private investments may not be undertaken—in contrast with the quid pro quo case where in efficient investments are undertaken. While our model is general, the conditions we describe appear to be in particular present in post-socialist economies. Our model offers a contributing explanation for the slow pace of progress in many such economies, which rely on foreign technological transfer to improve the technology and product quality of post-socialist industry, but fail to receive the requisite foreign investment despite governments' good intentions.