Welfare Effects of Tariff Reduction Formulas

World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations rely on tariff reduction formulas. Formula approaches are of increasing importance in trade talks, because of the large number of countries involved, the wider dispersion in initial tariffs (e.g. tariff peaks), and gaps between bound and applied tariff rates. This paper presents a two country intra‐industry trade model with heterogeneous firms subject to high and low tariffs. We examine the welfare effects of applying three different tariff reduction formulas discussed in the literature that were used and proposed in previous and current General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)/WTO negotiations (1) a proportional cut, (2) the Swiss formula and (3) a tiered formula. No single formula dominates for all conditions. The ranking of the three tools depends on the degree of product differentiation in the industry and the achieved reduction in the average tariff.     

关税、走私和福利效应

本文旨在通过构建开放经济条件下中国走私的均衡分析框架,以期探求：存在走私实际成本时,走私者行为如何决定,以及引入政府反走私行动、关税税率上升等外生冲击后,走私相关效应如国民福利效应将发生怎样变化？     

Tariff,Growth, and Welfare

We develop a two‐country (Home and Foreign) by two‐good (consumption good and investment good) by one factor (capital) endogenous growth model with international knowledge spillover to study the relationship between an import tariff and economic growth and welfare. First, unlike the past literature, we do not need to make an assumption such that the growth rates between countries are identical in a balanced growth path (BGP). Second, we show that there exists a unique and saddle‐point BGP with both countries being incompletely specialized. Third, a higher import tariff on the consumption good in the domestic country may boost (reduce) the rate of economic growth when the foreign (domestic) country has an absolute advantage in the investment good. Finally, a rise in the tariff rate by one country may improve world welfare under some parameter spaces.     

On the Welfare Effects of an Import Tariff Within an Economic Union

I study the effect of a small import tariff imposed by the government of an economic union of countries upon the welfare of workers in its member countries. I examine whether workers in some member countries are made worse off by the tariff imposition. Special attention is paid to the population distribution within the union and the geographical relationship among trading countries. I also examine whether the tariff imposition reduces the gaps between the welfare levels of workers in the member countries.
JEL Classification Numbers: F13, R13.     

Revenue-Neutral Environmental Tariff Reform, Growth, and Welfare

This paper analyzes the growth and welfare effects of revenue‐neutral tariff reform in a small open endogenous growth model with environmental externalities. As is the case in countries that depend primarily on imported energy, the employment of a foreign intermediate good causes negative environmental externalities in production. This paper shows that substituting a tariff on the foreign intermediate good for a tariff on the foreign consumption good in a revenue‐neutral way raises the growth rate and the welfare, if the environmental externality is sufficiently strong and if the elasticity of substitution between inputs lies within a certain range.     

The Welfare Effects of U.S. Most-Favored-Nation Tariff Treatment of Exports From China: An Empirical Inquiry *

This Study provides estimates of the elasticities of the U.S. import demand for Chinese goods and of China's export supply to he U.S. and China of granting Most-Favored-Nation (MFN) tariff treatment for China's exports. In general, if Washington denies MFN status to Beijing, Sino-American commercial as well as political relations world be seriously harmed. [F13, F14]     

我国房地产税的税率设计与社会福利效应

本文使用CHFS(2015)数据,基于量能负担原则对我国房地产税进行税率设计,并基于房地产税税率设计测算房地产税额在不同居民家庭收入分组之间的税负分布结构以及社会福利效应.结果发现,在全国样本下,房地产税的税率区间为[0.26％,0.66％],开征房地产税虽然具有一定的累进倾向,但是居民家庭的税后社会福利水平明显低于税前社会福利水平,且随着房地产税税率的提高,居民家庭的社会福利损失越大.在地区样本处理下,房地产税的税率区间具有明显的地区差异性特征,且相较于全国样本和地区样本,采用省、自治区、直辖市(以下简称省份)样本设计房地产税税率所产生的居民家庭社会福利损失最小.基于上述结论,本文建议房地产税税率设计不宜过高,且实行地区差别比例税率设计方案,可以有效降低房地产税给居民家庭带来的社会福利损失,以更好体现房地产税税率设计的客观性和科学性.     

The Welfare Effects of Incentive Schemes

This paper computes the change in welfare associated with the introduction of incentives. We calculate by how much the welfare gains of increased output due to incentives outweigh workers' disutility from increased effort. We accomplish this by studying the use of incentives by a firm in the check-clearing industry. Using this firm's production records, we model and estimate the worker's dynamic effort decision problem. We find that the firm's incentive scheme has a large effect on productivity, raising it by 12% over the sample period for the average worker. Using our parameter estimates, we show that the cost of increased effort due to incentives is equal to the dollar value of a 5% rise in productivity. Welfare is measured as the output produced minus the cost of effort; hence, the net increase in the average worker's welfare due to the introduction of the firm's bonus plan is 7%. Under a first-best scheme, we find that the net increase in welfare is 9%.     

The Welfare Effects of Environmental Taxation

Recent literature has investigated whether the welfare gains from environmental taxation are larger or smaller in a second-best setting than in a first-best setting. This question has mainly been addressed indirectly, by asking whether the second-best optimal environmental tax is higher or lower than the first-best Pigouvian rate. Even this indirect question has itself been approached indirectly, comparing the second-best optimal environmental tax to a proxy for its first-best value, marginal social damage (MSD). On closer examination, however, MSD becomes ambiguously defined and variable in a second-best setting making it an unreliable proxy for the Pigouvian rate. Given these observations, the current analysis reevaluates these welfare questions and finds that when compared directly to its first-best value, the second-best optimal environmental tax generally rises with increased revenue requirements. Even in cases where the second-best environmental tax is lower than its first-best value, the welfare gains may be greater than in a first-best setting. These results suggest that the marginal fiscal benefit (revenue recycling effect) exceeds the marginal fiscal cost (tax base effect) over a range of environmental tax rates that, for benchmark models, extends above the first-best Pigouvian rate. These findings reinforce the intuition that environmental policy complements rather than competes with the provision of other public goods.     

The Impact of Differential Falls in Offshoring Costs on Welfare

We highlight the fact that offshoring firms and local firms that do not offshore coexist in the North. Adopting the O‐ring production function approach to offshoring, we demonstrate that a fall in offshoring costs in any sector makes the South better off and that if offshoring costs in a high‐technology sector fall at a faster rate, the North is worse off, and vice versa.     

The Effects of Consumer Bliss on Welfare Economics

Some developed countries have sought to counteract what they see as unfair competition faced by their domestic industries arising from the employment of child labor in the production of consumer goods in developing countries by including a "social clause" in the World Trade Organization (WTO) charter. Many people and civil society organizations in developed countries are also genuinely concerned with child labor employment purely on humanitarian grounds. In this paper we have argued that a more appropriate approach to tackle the child labor problem would be to facilitate acceleration of growth in developing countries through greater, not less, integration of these countries into the world trading system. We have also argued that directing development assistance for improving institutions and social infrastructure would be more effective than trade sanctions.     

农户土地租赁行为及其福利效果

本文根据2003—2009年817个样本农户的微观面板数据,首先运用Biprobit模型,识别出了农户租入和租出土地决策的影响因素,解决了以往文献所忽视的内生性问题和"遗漏问题";然后运用多重内生处理效应模型估计了土地租赁的福利影响,解决了不可观测的变量所导致的自选择性问题,结论表明只要是在自愿基础上所进行的租赁,无论是租出土地还是租入土地,都会增加农户效用,提高农户福利水平。     

A Welfare Ranking of Multilateral Reductions in Real and Tariff Trade Barriers when Firms are Heterogenous

Trade liberalization comes about through reductions in various types of trade barriers. This paper introduces, apart from the customary real trade costs (i.e. iceberg and fixed export costs), two revenue generating trade barriers (i.e. an ad valorem tariff and a trade license) into a standard heterogeneous‐firms‐trade model with Pareto distributed productivities. We derive analytical welfare rankings of all four liberalization channels for an equal effect on two openness measures, for any trade cost level and while all four barriers are simultaneously present, i.e. for any initial equilibrium. We show that when openness is measured at retail prices, not border prices, the welfare rankings are sensitive to the degree of efficiency in revenue redistribution, e.g. the share of tariff revenues wasted on rent‐seeking activities. As a result, multilateral tariff reductions can switch from the least to the most preferred mode of liberalization. Among the other three barriers we establish a universal welfare ranking for any strictly positive level of revenue redistribution and for either measure of openness.     

The Hysteretic Effects on the Real Exchange Rates

In this paper we investigate the dynamics developed from the exchange rate relative price relationship using a hysteresis framework. The rationale for such hysteretic effects is in terms of firms' unresponsiveness to the exchange rate changes due to pricing to market-type arguments.The empirical support of these ideas is derived by applying a linear approximation of the hysteretic effects.We conclude that the hysteretic effects are a source of non-linearity, strongly affecting the long-run relationship of exchange rate and prices.     

Dynamic Interactions in Trade Policy in a Differential Game Model of Tariff Protection

This paper develops a two‐country dynamic game model of tariff protection to reconsider optimal trade policies and their implications for welfare. The authors show that an import subsidy is optimal in the feedback Nash equilibria, which results in a curious possibility that the domestic market is monopolized by the foreign firrm. However, welfare comparisons among Nash equilibria, free trade, and autarky reveal that feedback Nash equilibria involve higher welfare than both autarky and free trade, i.e. dynamic noncooperative choices of policy serve as tacit policy coordination and ensure larger trade gains relative to free trade.