Differentiated Products,Divided Industries: Firm Preferences over Trade Liberalization

The recent focus on firms in international trade suggests two conjectures about preferences over trade policy – only the most productive firms should support freer trade, and industries can be internally divided over reciprocal liberalization. This paper clarifies the content and scope of these claims. The most productive firms are generally not the greatest beneficiaries from trade liberalization and may oppose further liberalization due to increased competition in export markets from compatriot firms. Exporting industries will feature no support for trade if foreign competition is too strong or barriers too unequal. The key analytic factor generating intra‐industry division is product differentiation, both directly, by increasing export opportunities for less efficient firms, and by inducing home market effects wherein larger countries are more competitive. The implications of these findings for the distributional effects of liberalization and the study of trade politics are discussed.     

Trade Liberalization and the Degree of Competition in International Duopoly

This paper analyzes how a reduction in trade costs influences the possibility for firms to engage in international cartels, and hence how trade liberalization affects the degree of competition. We consider a particular intra‐industry trade model amended to allow for firms producing differentiated products. Our main finding is that trade liberalization may have an anti‐competitive effect. We find that there is no unique relation between a reduction in trade costs and the degree of competition. When products are differentiated, a lowering of trade costs is pro‐competitive if trade costs are initially high, but anti‐competitive if trade costs initially are low. Hence, trade policy is not necessarily a substitute for competition policy.     

THE NON‐TRADED SECTOR,LOBBYING, AND THE CHOICE BETWEEN THE CUSTOMS UNION AND THE COMMON MARKET

This paper models immigration policy as the outcome of political competition between interest groups representing individuals employed in different sectors. In standard positive theory, restrictive immigration policy results from a low‐skilled median voter voting against predominantly low‐skilled immigration. In the present paper, in contrast, once trade policies are liberalized, restrictive immigration policy results from anti‐immigration lobbying by interest groups representing the non‐traded sectors. It is shown that this is in line with empirical regularities from recent episodes of restrictive immigration legislation in the European Union. It is further shown that if governments negotiate bilaterally over trade and migration policy regimes, the equilibrium regime depends (i) on the sequencing of the international negotiation process and (ii) on the set of available trade and migration policy regimes. In particular, the most comprehensive and most welfare‐beneficial type of liberalization may be rejected only because a less comprehensive type of liberalization is available.     

Building Trade Barriers and Knocking Them Down

This paper examines the dynamic behavior of trade protection and liberalization. Consistent with evidence on the development of trade policies, policy decisions are modeled as the outcome of a political contest between import-competing interests and exporters. Uncertainty about the success of political contests yields a dynamic equilibrium in which tariffs gradually increase over time. Eventually, increasing tariffs reduce profits in the exporting sector to such a degree that exporters enter the political arena and lobby actively against protection. Depending on the market characteristics, a political contest may generate a liberalization or a move toward autarky.     

Is Trade Liberalization an Important Cause of Increasing U.S. Wage Inequality? The Interaction of Theory and Policy

The majority of mainstream economists believe that globalization and trade liberalization have had a minor role in increasing U.S. wage inequality. A minority argues that capital mobility and outsourcing indicate a larger effect. This paper first surveys these views, and then argues that how we understand the policy consequences of trade liberalization helps determine the character of our analysis of the issue itself. Thus, a shift in policy perspective, to consider the "equity costs" of trade liberalization in terms of eroded U.S. labor market institutions, produces a larger framework for analyzing the consequences of globalization and trade liberalization than is available in traditional comparative advantage efficiency reasoning. From this wider perspective, trade liberalization has likely had a greater impact on U.S. wage inequality than even the minority mainstream position allows.     

贸易自由化影响农村贫困的路径与特征

城乡人口流动是当今社会最重要的经济现象,贸易自由化的影响最为显著,为此,我们运用门槛面板数据模型实证研究了贸易自由化影响我国农村贫困的路径和特征。结果发现,贸易自由化主要从经济增长、就业与工资以及物价水平路径影响农村贫困。并且,贸易自由化和农村贫困之间存在一种非线性的倒U关系,即在贸易自由化初期,贸易自由化加重了农村贫困,当贸易自由化水平越过某一门槛值时,贸易自由化有助于农村减贫。因此,继续扩大自由贸易的层次与规模,是未来农村反贫困的一个政策选项。     

International Provision of Trade Services, Trade, and Fragmentation

This paper examines the special role that trade liberalization in service industries can play in stimulating not only trade in services but also in goods. International trade in goods requires inputs from several services industries (trade services, such as transportation, insurance, and finance) in order to complete and facilitate international transactions. Restriction on the ability of national service providers to provide these services across borders and within foreign countries creates additional costs and barriers to international trade above those that would arise in otherwise comparable intranational exchange. As a result, trade liberalization in services can yield benefits, by facilitating trade in goods, that are larger than one might expect from analysis of the services trade alone. This paper explores this idea using simple theoretical models to specify the relationships between services trade and goods trade. The paper also notes the role of services trade in a model of international industrial fragmentation, where production processes can be separated across locations but at some cost in terms of additional service inputs. The incentives for such fragmentation can be larger across countries than within countries, owing to the greater differences in factor prices and technologies available. However, the service costs of international fragmentation can also be larger, especially if regulations and restrictions impede the international provision of services. As a result, trade liberalization in services can also stimulate fragmentation of production of both goods and services, thus increasing international trade and the gains from trade even further.     

Four Simple Tests of Campaign Contributions and Trade Policy Preferences

This paper uses campaign contribution data to examine trade policy preferences among political action committees. With perfect factor mobility, as the Heckscher–Ohlin (HO) model assumes, interest group trade positions should depend on their factor of production but not on their industry. We show, consistent with the 2 × 2 HO model, that capital groups consistently back representatives supporting trade liberalization while labor groups favor protectionists. Unlike previous work, we also measure the variation in trade policy preferences within capital and labor groups. We find evidence that the industry net export position significantly affects labor unions' trade policy preferences. Industry characteristics have no impact on capital group lobbying. The former result suggests that empirical analyses of labor PAC contributions that exclude industry characteristics may be misspecified.     

贸易自由化对就业的影响——来自第三产业和个体私营企业的数据

大部分研究贸易对就业影响的中文文献关注的均是制造业行业,忽视了贸易对第三产业就业的影响,同时所采用的制造业行业数据中也没有包含私营和个体企业的就业人数,因此也忽略了贸易对私营和个体企业就业的影响。本文利用1998-2007年中国的省际分行业数据,采用联立方程组模型,研究了贸易自由化对第三产业就业和个体、私营企业就业的影响。研究结果显示,虽然服务业贸易占贸易和服务业产值的比重很小,对就业的直接影响不大,但是贸易自由化可以通过拉动经济增长有效促进第三产业就业,特别是对零售、仓储、建筑、居民服务、餐饮、住宿、电力煤气和水的供应这些行业的作用尤为明显。同时,贸易自由化程度的加深对制造业行业和第三产业的个体、私营性质企业的就业促进作用也很显著。     

政策干预下我国贸易自由化的福利效应

近年来,贸易和环境问题越来越成为各国关注的焦点,传统贸易理论忽视了环境资源的合理使用和保护,给发展中国家带来了严重的环境问题。文章在揭示传统贸易理论在环境资源分析不足的同时,建立了一个政策干预下的发展中国家的自由贸易模型,在此基础上结合我国实际情况分析贸易自由化的福利效应。     

Liberalization,quality and welfare: removing the Italian VER on Japanese car exports

The empirical evidence that evaluates ex-post the effects of trade policy confirms the presumption, well known in theory, that quantitative barriers to trade have an impact on the average quality of exports. Yet, in evaluating ex-ante the effects of trade policy reform, very few studies take into account the role of the induced change in quality. The paper evaluates the effects of liberalization in the Italian car market through a calibrated model where the choice of the quality of exports is made endogenous. Simulating the removal of the VER on Japanese exports, there are substantial gains from liberalization when only quantity effects are considered. Results change dramatically if quality effects are taken into account: the downgrading in Japanese exports entails a strong reduction in consumers' gains.     

Export,FDI and the welfare gains from trade liberalization

This paper extends Melitz and Redding (2015) to analyze the welfare gains from trade liberalization by adding foreign direct investment(FDI). Our model predicts that with FDI activities, welfare gains from trade liberalization will be strictly lower than those in a model without FDI, but only takes exports into account. In addition, the calibrated model indicates that with FDI activities, aggregate welfare reaches its maximum when the fixed export costs are positive rather than 0. Furthermore, we decompose the welfare gains induced by trade liberalization from continuing exporters, and switchers. The results show that in any case, with or without FDI, continuing exporters contribute a larger share to welfare gains than status switching firms.     

对贸易自由化和环境保护关系的经济学思考

文章从经济学角度分析了环保政策对一国比较优势和吸引外资的影响以及贸易自由化对环境的影响,认为评价贸易自由化效应时必须考虑对环境的影响,不能为了贸易自由化而牺牲环境。     

Horizontal and vertical intra-industry trade in Australian manufacturing: does trade liberalization have any impact?

This paper contributes to the literature on intra-industry trade (IIT) by disentangling such trade into horizontally and vertically differentiated products, and investigating their determinants in the context of trade liberalization in Australia. IIT in Australian manufacturing has increased following trade liberalization in 1980s and is increasingly dominated by vertically differentiated products. Industry level evidence confirms that the failure to segregate IIT into horizontally and vertically differentiated products produces misleading results as their determinants differ. Also, structural changes brought about by the policy liberalization appear to have an impact on total as well vertical IIT.     

Would NAFTA have been Approved by the House of Representatives under President Bush? Presidents,Parties, and Trade Policy

This paper examines five trade policy votes in the United States House of Representatives, one during each of the last five presidential terms. The paper investigates the determinants of representative voting and shows that Congress members are more likely to support trade liberalization if the President is a member of their own party. The estimation allows a prediction to be made of the likely House trade votes under alternative presidential election outcomes. The model predicts that the probability of NAFTA being approved would have been greatly reduced by a victory for President Bush (41) in the 1992 election. Neither the trade promotion authority granted to President Bush (43) in 2001 nor the CAFTA signed in 2005 would likely have been approved under Democratic Presidents.     

贸易自由化是如何影响我国出口产品质量的？*--基于贸易政策不确定性下降的视角

传统理论认为贸易自由化会促进出口产品的质量升级,但我国加入W TO后的情况却并非如此。文章基于贸易政策不确定性的视角,利用我国加入W TO前后美国对我国产品进行关税调整这一自然实验,通过倍差法分析了贸易自由化对我国出口产品质量的影响。研究表明：（1）在贸易自由化的过程中,贸易政策不确定性的下降会拉低我国的出口产品质量,且这一结论在改变质量测度方法、控制成本效应以及使用不同的产品属性、贸易对象和样本的情况下依然稳健;（2）贸易政策不确定性主要是通过广延边际上的质量调整降低了我国出口产品的总体质量,即在贸易政策不确定性下降幅度越大的产品中,有越多的生产低质量产品的企业进入出口市场;（3）在集约边际上,存续企业并未针对贸易政策不确定性的下降做出及时的产品质量调整,从而无法改变我国的产品质量在短期内下降的趋势。文章为我国如何在推行贸易自由化的同时实现出口产品质量升级提供了启示。     

资本账户开放与国际金融冲击的传导——基于DSGE模型的分析

本文在动态随机一般均衡的框架下,建立了一个包括贸易部门和非贸易部门的小型开放经济模型,系统研究和比较资本管制与资本账户开放两种情况下,国外金融冲击、出口需求冲击对中国经济的不同影响和传导机制,并检验资本账户开放情形下应对国际冲击时不同货币政策规则的有效性。结果发现：当资本账户开放时,一国受到国外冲击的波动幅度远大于资本管制的情况;资本管制和资本账户开放对国际金融冲击传导机制的关键差异在于贸易部门与非贸易部门的互动关系,具体表现为劳动力转移的差异;在资本账户开放后,面对不同形式的国际冲击,货币数量型规则和混合型规则均能有效熨平经济波动。     

印度利益集团对其贸易政策的影响

本文利用贸易政策形成的需求供给分析框架及利益集团影响贸易政策形成的机制，分析了印度利益集团对印度贸易政策确立与演变的影响。虽然印度各种利益集团的相互博弈在一定程度上影响了印度贸易政策的形成与发展，但利益集团发挥的作用是有限的，印度政党对利益集团的利用是充分的。印度历届政府经常利用利益集团之间的斗争，推进贸易自由化进程。     

Political Externalities, Nondiscrimination, and a Multilateral World

During the past half century, multilateral trade liberalization has reduced tariffs to historically low levels. The “Received Theory” of multilateral trade agreements, based solely on terms‐of‐trade externalities between national governments, offers an explanation that has become the conventional wisdom. But it is dramatically inconsistent with actual trade agreements. This paper offers an alternative explanation, based on intergovernmental political externalities, consistent with what we actually observe. With remarkably little necessary formal structure—in particular, no formal bargaining model—this framework (chosen to parallel actual experience) gives an immediate and transparent role to the basic characteristics of contemporary trade agreements: gradual liberalization, reciprocity, nondiscrimination, and multilateralism.     

The Effects of Trade Liberalization between Heterogeneous Countries on Endogenous Mergers

This paper examines the effects of trade liberalization on merger behavior. We endogenize merger choice among owners in an oligopolistic industry in asymmetric countries to analyze the consequences of trade cost reductions on competitiveness and welfare. In this context, the non‐cooperative game supports asymmetric market structures. We also find that trade liberalization is not necessarily pro‐competitive in countries with the competitive advantage, even if trade costs are completely abolished. Moreover, the tariff‐jumping explanation of international mergers does not necessarily apply. The welfare analysis shows that merger behavior can significantly alter any gains from liberalization. Countries should consider enforcing competition in regional agreements. Specifically, to avoid a reduction in domestic welfare following trade‐liberalizing reductions in trade costs, a high‐cost country's optimal policy may be to ban international mergers.