What is at Stake in the Doha Round?

In this study the key elements of the WTO Doha Round are simulated and the main implications for international trade and national income are analysed. Based on negotiation information, three scenarios are designed. All scenarios encompass goods, services and agricultural liberalisation as well as trade facilitation. For goods liberalisation, a so‐called Swiss formula is used to cut bound tariff rates. Agricultural tariffs are cut according to a tiered linear formula. Attention has been given to the modelling of trade facilitation. Indirect as well as direct trade transaction costs are modelled. For simulation of the services liberalisation quantitative estimates of indirect trade barriers are used. The simulation results show that all regions in the aggregation gain in the simulated Doha scenarios, with a particularly strong result for developing countries. A conservative estimate is that global income increases with 0.2–0.7 per cent of initial GDP, depending on the level of liberalisation. Trade facilitation contributes the most to these results, with increased market access for non‐agricultural goods coming in second place. Overall, simulations indicate the importance of countries’ own liberalisation for their national income gains, and the importance of a broad‐based round.     

Non‐Tariff Measures,Specific Trade Concerns and Tariff Reduction

This paper studies the determinants of the recent proliferation of Specific Trade Concerns raised at the WTO on non‐tariff trade measures (NTMs), with a focus on sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) and technical barriers to trade (TBTs). Even though NTMs are imposed de jure to protect consumers from unhealthy products, they increase trade costs de facto. So, when tariff protection lowers, NTMs become effective barriers to trade and the exporting countries can complain at the dedicated committee at the WTO (STCs). Therefore, we study whether STCs are raised by exporting countries as a consequence of tariff reductions in importing countries, that is when non‐tariff measures become barriers to trade. Using a recent database on STCs over the period 1996–2010, we find empirical evidence that SPS and TBT concerns are raised by exporting country as a consequence of importer's tariff cut.     

Tariff Liberalisation and the Growth of World Trade: A Comparative Historical Analysis of the Multilateral Trading System

The aims of this study are to assess the relationship between tariff barriers and world trade growth from a comparative and historical perspective, and to derive some useful indications for evaluating the effectiveness of the current multilateral trading system for promoting world trade. The novelty of this work is the complex reconstruction of a historical tariffs and trade series for the period 1870–2000, for 23 countries; this constitutes a good proxy for world trade (accounting for over 60 per cent) in this period. The effect of tariff liberalisation on trade growth is analysed empirically using panel data and time series. The results, while confirming the existence of a world level long‐term relationship between tariff reductions and trade growth, demonstrate how this substantial and significant relationship pre‐World War II gradually diminished in importance and significance after 1950. This result does not conflict with the key role of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade/World Trade Organization system in trade liberalisation; however, it underlines the importance of a formalised multilateral trading system, not so much for tariff liberalisation, but for building a virtuous process of international coordination of trade policies and ensuring fuller participation in world trade.     

基于GTAP模型对多哈回合非农产品关税减让可能效应的一般均衡分析

非农产品市场准入谈判是多哈回合重点议题之一,且至今仍未达成最终成果。2008年7月举行的世界贸易组织小型部长级会议曾在多哈回合非农产品市场准入问题上,各方曾根据"主席案文"①,就瑞士公式系数达成共识,按约定的系数和灵活性安排,进行关税减让。非农产品关税减让将对中国经济和对外贸易产生重要影响。本文将采用目前国际通用的全球贸易分析项目(GTAP模型),来模拟WTO非农产品关税减让对WTO主要成员方,尤其是中国,宏观和产业经济的影响。     

The biggest losers (and winners) from US trade liberalization

Many development experts worry that continuing reductions of tariff levels in high-income countries will limit trade flows from developing countries that benefit from preferential trade programs because of ‘preference erosion.’ Using a panel of US import data between the years of 1997 and 2005, I find that reductions in preference margins will significantly diminish imports of some products, particularly from lower-middle and low income countries; for example, a 1% reduction in the US tariff on a product that is currently imported duty-free from developing countries will decrease imports of that product from lower-middle income countries by an average of 2.6%. However, many products produced by developing countries fail to qualify for preferential tariffs, thus a gradual reduction in all US tariff rates is expected to have only a modest impact on trade flows from developing countries.     

Tariff Liberalisation and Increased Administrative Protection: Is There a Quid Pro Quo?

Theoretical models and intuition suggest that the amount of non‐traditional protection such as anti‐dumping duties will increase as more traditional forms such as tariffs are lowered under multilateral trade agreements. This paper is the first empirical study of the role of tariff liberalisation in the spread of anti‐dumping. Through both correlations and regression approaches we analyse the relationship between tariff concessions made during the Uruguay Round trade negotiations and the filing of anti‐dumping petitions, with particular interest in whether multilateral trade reductions have spurred the recent growth in new users of anti‐dumping policies. We find that, at least for developing economies, tariff reductions agreed to under the Uruguay Round not only increased the likelihood of a country using anti‐dumping protection but also the total number of anti‐dumping petitions filed by countries.     

Income distribution and unequal gains from trade

This paper studies welfare gains from trade in a tractable model with a nonhomothetic preference over product quality. We show that the welfare changes due to trade shocks are unequal across consumers and derive a parsimonious formula to measure these welfare changes as in Arkolakis et al. (2012, American Economic Review, 102, 94–130). We find that the welfare changes are larger for consumers with lower income. Moreover, this paper shows that the welfare implications are different between a change in (iceberg-type) variable trade cost and a change in tariff when tariff revenue matters. More importantly, we show that the difference varies across consumers with different income levels.     

Structural estimation and solution of international trade models with heterogeneous firms

We present an empirical implementation of a general-equilibrium model of international trade with heterogeneous manufacturing firms. The theory underlying our model is consistent with Melitz (2003). A nonlinear structural estimation procedure identifies a set of core parameters and unobserved firm-level trade frictions that best fit the geographic pattern of trade. Our estimation model is consistent with the specified general equilibrium model, and we conduct general equilibrium counterfactual analyses to illustrate model responses. We first assess the economic effects of reductions in measured tariffs. Taking the simple-average welfare change across regions the Melitz structure indicates welfare gains from liberalization that are four times larger than in a standard trade policy simulation. Furthermore, when we compare the economic impact of tariff reductions with reductions in estimated fixed trade costs we find that policy measures affecting the fixed costs are of greater importance than tariff barriers.     

In Search of Optimised Regional Trade Agreements and Applications to East Asia

We quantitatively analyse the trade effects of enhanced trade facilitation with extended gravity equations. Our findings confirm that RTAs comprised of countries equipped with better trade facilitation are more likely to be trade‐creating, less likely to be trade‐diverting, and are thus more likely to lead the world economy toward global free trade. We also find that (i) the traditional gains from shallow integration through eliminating tariff barriers will be greater for South‐South RTAs in East Asia such as an ASEAN‐China RTA, provided that the tariff‐reducing schedule is strictly fulfilled, (ii) the gains from deeper integration through enhancing trade facilitation will be greater for North‐North RTAs in East Asia such as a Japan‐Korea RTA, and (iii) the gains from a combined trade liberalisation strategy through tariff reductions and enhanced trade facilitation will be greater for North‐South RTAs in East Asia such as a China‐Korea and an ASEAN+3 RTA.     

Reciprocal Tariff Reductions Under Asymmetric Bargaining Power

Increasing heterogeneity of participants that form the basis of WTO trade negotiations has raised concerns about unfair treatment of weak countries due to their lack of bargaining power. The WTO responds to these concerns by arguing that the institutional design with its specific rules such as the principle of reciprocity serves to reduce inequalities in bargaining power by giving smaller (weaker) countries more voice. A recent study has challenged this result for a particular type of reciprocity, namely the volume approach. Given the wide discretion of how reciprocal concessions are conducted, I give a more complete picture of how different kinds of reciprocity affect the bargaining outcome of asymmetric countries. It turns out that, while the volume approach amplifies the negative effects of power asymmetries, a tariff formula approach has the ability to reverse this effect. For low symmetries, the Swiss formula does the best job, whereas for larger power differences, a linear formula is best suited to reduce the impact of power asymmetries.     

Do tariffs matter for the extensive margin of international trade? An empirical analysis

With disaggregate tariff data we study the impact of changing tariffs on the range of goods countries export to the United States. Our probits with country and good effects show tariffs tend to have a statistically significant but small impact: at best 5% of the increasing extensive margin for 1989-1999 and 12% for 1996-2006 is explained by tariff reductions. This suggests the extensive margin has not amplified the impact of tariffs on trade flows to such an extent that the relatively moderate tariff reductions since WW II can explain the strong growth of world trade.     

The environmental effect of trade liberalization: Evidence from China's manufacturing firms

While prior literature on trade liberalisation and the environment has mostly focused on the macroeconomic ramifications, this study explores at the firm level whether and how changes of trade barriers brought about by China's accession to the WTO may impact on its manufacturing firms’ environmental performance. Adopting a difference-in-differences (DID) methodology, we document the effects of tariff reductions on improving firm-level SO2 emission intensity, and the key corporate strategic decisions responsible for delivering the observed results, with robustness tests covering other major pollutants. In response to trade liberalisation, firms are found to increase labour resources for environmental protection and to improve their production processes to reduce emission intensity. This study contributes to the literature by investigating at the level of the operating firm how output and input tariff reductions may impact on environmental performance and uncovering for the first time the specific actions responsible for the results.     

Preferences,rent destruction and multilateral liberalization: The building block effect of CUSFTA

If a free trade agreement (FTA) is characterized by the exchange of market access with a large and competitive trading partner, the agreement can cause a leakage of protectionist benefits to domestic industry from lobbying against external tariff cuts. This rent destruction effect of an FTA can free policy makers to be more aggressive in multilateral tariff cuts. We argue that the Canadian–US free trade agreement (CUSFTA) provides an ideal policy experiment to link this mechanism to the data. Exploring the determinants of Canada's tariff cuts at the 8-digit HS product level, we find that CUSFTA acted as an additional driver of Canadian multilateral tariff reductions during the Uruguay Round.     

Tokyo round tariff reductions and the less developed countries

This paper presents new evaluations of the multilateral trade negotiations from the perspectives of (1) the objectives established by GATT signatories in the Tokyo Declaration, and (2) the LDCs’ goals for the negotiations. It also attempts to resolve some of the controversy over the gains and losses which MFN tariff reductions would generate for LDC exports, some but not all of which receive preferential access to advanced-country markets. The analysis indicates that even minor improvements in tariff preferences would have been superior to or have compensated for MFN tariff cuts.     

中国-东盟区域经济深度一体化——制度环境与制度距离的视角

通过关税的不断减让,中国-东盟区域经济一体化取得了快速发展,但是伴随关税的持续降低,其对贸易的促进作用终究有限。后自贸区时代实现中国-东盟区域经济的深度一体化需要寻求新的突破口。基于一国制度环境及国家间的制度距离会对贸易成本尤其是交易成本产生影响的理论分析,以2002～2009年中国-东盟七国双边贸易的面板数据进行了实证检验。结果表明,制度环境及双边国家间的制度距离对中国-东盟七国间的贸易的确具有显著影响。当前各国间较大的商务制度环境差异意味着后自贸区时代通过加强国家间的双边合作和政策协调,以及自身市场化改革、转型,通过缩小国家间的制度距离进而促进区域经济向深度一体化迈进具有较大的空间。     

Free trade agreements in a small,open country: The case of Norway

Negotiating free trade agreements (FTAs) has been a high political priority for Norway. Today, it has agreements with 41 countries outside the European Union (EU)/the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), resulting in one of the world's most extensive FTA networks. FTAs cover about 10% of Norway's trade—a share likely to increase in the future. These agreements eliminate tariffs on a substantial number of traded products and have gradually become more comprehensive, covering an expanding range of non‐tariff areas. Hence, they may have trade‐promoting effects beyond tariff reductions as such. On the other hand, the non‐tariff provisions often do not go further than what has already been dealt with in other international agreements or practised domestically, so their overall effect may be limited.     

What's the Point of Reciprocal Trade Negotiations? Exports,Imports, and Gains from Trade

This paper explains why trade‐policy makers may prefer reciprocal trade negotiations (RTN) to unilateral tariff reductions (UTR) for economic reasons. It answers puzzles like ‘Why WTO reciprocity?’ and strengthens the unnecessarily weak case made for the WTO by those who downplay or dismiss benefits from foreign tariff reductions (FTR). RTN is superior to UTR because it provides economic benefits that UTR cannot – namely, FTR benefits which are clearer than potentially important UTR benefits: Whereas each policy offers efficiency gains, any terms‐of‐trade effect of UTR generally detracts from these gains, while any terms‐of‐trade effect of FTR is typically beneficial (especially for a small price‐taking country) with this benefit augmenting FTR's efficiency gains. Moreover, benefits from reductions in foreign barriers may come from several sources; they are not solely the result of terms‐of‐trade improvement – or economies of scale (the two benefits already noted in the literature, though often dismissed). For example, with foreign NTB elimination, possible home benefits are shown even with rising costs and terms‐of‐trade deterioration. RTN is also superior to UTR because, by eliminating protection in either NTB or tariff form, RTN provides an escape from not only a terms‐of‐trade prisoners’ dilemma, but many other previously unrecognised prisoners’ dilemmas, including one in international rent transfers, and several others with no economies‐of‐scale or terms‐of‐trade motivation. Of course, if superior RTN is not an option, UTR may well be desirable. If reciprocity is an option, but only in a narrower CU or FTA form, such reciprocity may still be superior to UTR, or it may be inferior; theory cannot unambiguously rank these.     

A South–South Survival Strategy: The Potential for Trade among Developing Countries

Trade between developing countries, or South–South trade, has been growing rapidly in recent years following reductions in tariff barriers. However, significant barriers remain, and there is currently reluctance in many developing countries to undertake further reductions, with a preference instead for focusing on opening up access to developed country markets, or maintaining the status quo given that multilateral liberalisation may result in the erosion of preferential access enjoyed by some developing countries. This emphasis on Northern markets represents a missed opportunity for developing countries. To assess this we compare the potential effects of the removal of barriers on South–South trade with the gains from developed country liberalisation and from regional free trade areas within Africa, Asia and Latin America. A general equilibrium model, the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) model, containing information on preferential bilateral tariffs, is used to estimate the impacts. The results indicate that the opening up of Northern markets would provide annual welfare gains to developing countries of $22 billion. However, the removal of South–South barriers has the potential to generate gains 40 per cent larger. The results imply that giving greater emphasis to removing barriers between as well as within continents could prove a successful Southern survival strategy.     

Trade liberalization and industrial restructuring through mergers and acquisitions

This paper analyzes mergers and acquisitions (M&As) as a channel of industrial restructuring after trade liberalization. Using the Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA) of 1989 as a source of exogenous variation in trade barriers, I show that trade liberalization increased domestic Canadian M&A activity (Canadian firms buying other Canadian firms) by over 70%. There is no robust link between tariff reductions and either domestic U.S. or cross-border M&As. I also provide evidence that domestic M&As transferred resources from less to more productive firms and that the magnitude of the overall transfer was quantitatively important.     

Does trade globalization induce or inhibit corporate transparency? Unbundling the growth potential and product market competition channels

Trade globalization may affect corporate transparency via multiple channels, with potentially opposite signs. We aim to empirically disentangle these channels by tracking evolution of corporate transparency for 4061 listed firms in tradable sectors in 49 countries during 1992–2005. By using detailed tariff schedules, we measure changes in growth opportunities and product market competition enabled by foreign and domestic trade liberalizations, respectively. On the one hand, higher growth opportunities engendered by foreign trade reforms are disproportionately associated with better corporate transparency in industries that depend more heavily on external financing. On the other hand, greater product market competition engendered by domestic tariff reductions has no significant impact on corporate transparency.