Factor tariffs and income

This article examines a tariff on an imported factor of production in a small, open economy with two domestic factors. Suppose the imported factor is intensive in export production, and labor in import competing production. The factor tariff would reduce export production and trade, but raise the wage. The flexibility afforded by the three factors raises the possibility that import spending might fall more than the decrease in output. That is, the factor tariff could raise income. Inelastic demand for the imported factor and a high labor share of income favor increased income.     

On the Irrelevance of Mercosur: Evidence From Foreign Direct Investment

ABSTRACT

This article utilizes data from more than 100 countries over 30 years to identify the key factors that make a country more attractive to foreign direct investment (FDI). We find evidence that a country's potential marginal returns to capital, available infrastructure, degree of trade openness, labor force qualification, and macroeconomic stability have a positive impact on FDI inflows. Our estimates capture a change in the role played by trade protection and an increase in the importance of human capital as globalization progressed. An application of our models illustrates why Mercosur countries have underperformed their peers in attracting FDI.     

Optimal tariffs,optimal taxes and economic development

Cross-section and time-series data suggest that nations substitute income taxes for tariffs as they develop. This paper confronts the data within the context of a two-country open-economy endogenous growth model in which public expenditure is financed by an optimal tariff and income tax. When the latter is subject to administrative costs, the model predicts that the government will optimally substitute the income tax for the tariff as output rises along the transition. The model is calibrated and a simulation yields time paths for the shares of total government revenue derived from the tariff and the income tax that are consistent with the data.     

Informality,tariffs and wealth

This article analyzes the interaction between changes in tariff protection, informality, inequality and aggregate income. First, we describe some new empirical evidence on informality, the formal/informal wage gap and trade openness in Latin American countries. Then we present a simple model characterized by three (empirically based) assumptions: (1) agents consume both formal and informal goods; (2) the government uses tariff revenues to purchase formal goods; (3) informality is a voluntary phenomenon. The model predicts that tariff reduction increases informality and wage inequality and that the maximization of income requires a positive level of tariff protection. The model's results are shown to be consistent with the empirical evidence concerning Latin American countries.     

浅析非洲经济一体化的贸易创造与贸易转移效应

在概述战后非洲一体化发展总体状况的基础上,通过构建理论模型,利用实证分析方法,选择南部非洲发展共同体为研究对象对南部非洲发展共同体的贸易创造和贸易转移问题进行探讨,从而为客观评估非洲经济一体化进程中的静态福利效应提供一种参考。研究结果表明,南部非洲发展共同体并没有发生明显的贸易创造及贸易转移效应,成员国从一体化中获得的福利收益是有限的。     

Trade protection and tax evasion: Evidence from Kenya,Mauritius, and Nigeria

We examine the effect of trade protection rates on evasion in three African countries Kenya, Mauritius, and Nigeria. In capturing the effect of trade protection on tariff evasion, we use a much improved measure of trade protection (MAcMap-HS6 2001 and 2004). For two of these countries, this dataset allows the novelty of using variation in trade protection across product, time, and trading partners leading to significantly refined estimates of evasion elasticity relative to existing studies on tariff evasion. We find a robust evidence for positive elasticity of evasion with respect to tariffs in Kenya and Nigeria with relatively weaker evidence for Mauritius. Our results match the rankings of countries in institutional quality. Greater responsiveness of evasion to the level of tariffs is established in Nigeria (comparatively weak institutional quality) vis-à-vis Kenya, and in Kenya vis-à-vis Mauritius (comparatively good institutional quality). This pattern is preserved even when focusing on same set of trading partners and same set of imported products for the three countries. This result is robust to controlling for protection on related products (that creates incentives/ opportunities for evasion) and also for degree of differentiation of the product and some other characteristics.     

Network externalities,transport costs,and tariffs

This article formulates a reciprocal market model of international duopoly with network externalities to reconsider welfare effects of reductions in transport costs and tariffs. Depending on the magnitude of network externalities, we show two possibilities. One of them, which emerges under strong network externalities, illustrates that freer trade unambiguously improves welfare for any initial level of trade barriers. This finding provides an affirmative evaluation of freer trade.     

中美贸易不平衡争议的文献综述

近年来,美中贸易逆差一直是中美双方颇为关注的一个热点问题,也是影响两国贸易关系发展的一个主要障碍,学者们在关于中美贸易不平衡说法方面也存在很多争议,主要可以分为以下几个方面:中美贸易统计数据上的巨大差别;隐藏在巨额顺差数据背后的实质;关于美国对中美贸易不平衡态度的争论。本文以这三个方面为线索对研究中美贸易不平衡的文献进行综述。     

The protectionist bias of duty drawbacks: evidence from Mercosur

In a political-economy setting where tariffs and duty drawbacks are endogenously chosen through industry lobbying, it is shown that full duty-drawbacks are granted to exporters who use imported intermediates in their production. This in turn decreases their incentives to counter-lobby against high tariffs on their inputs. In equilibrium, higher tariffs will be observed on these goods. The creation of a regional block will change the political equilibrium. Duty-drawbacks will be eliminated on intra-regional exports, which in turn will lead to lower tariffs for goods used as inputs by intra-regional exporters. Evidence from Mercosur suggests that the elimination of duty-drawbacks for intra-regional exports led to increased counter-lobbying by users of intermediate products. In its absence the common external tariff would have been on average 3.5 percentage points (25 percent) higher.     

国际贸易理论的演进逻辑:贸易动因、贸易结构和贸易结果

国际贸易理论历经古典贸易理论、新古典贸易理论、新贸易理论、新兴古典贸易理论和新新贸易理论五个阶段,主要回答三个基本问题:贸易动因、贸易结构和贸易结果。依据不同的假设,贸易理论对影响贸易的边界条件的解释各不相同,对贸易动因解释也不相同;贸易结构从行业间贸易、行业内贸易发展为企业间贸易,国际贸易正在向全球化下的企业分工演变;贸易结果是国际贸易得以持续展开的效果,生产力提升是最终的结果。基于三个基本问题,比较各种国际贸易理论,揭示各种国际贸易理论的局限性,并做出评价。     

Endogenous tariffs and trade adjustment assistance

This paper examines whether trade adjustment assistance is an effective tool for blunting political opposition to trade liberalization. The traditional argument is that adjustment assistance bribes labor unions so that they will accept reduced tariff protection. In this way, a trade adjustment assistance program should help the government lower tariffs and increase social welfare. This paper introduces trade adjustment assistance into a political economy model of endogenous tariff formation. The model shows that adjustment assistance reduces policy makers’ incentives to press for trade liberalization and may slow down the pace of reform and lower social welfare under certain plausible conditions.     

欧盟对华反倾销的贸易转移效应:基于产品角度的经验分析

本文从欧盟对华反倾销的产品类别出发,分析得出化工产品、钢铁及其制品和矿产品遭受欧盟反倾销强度较大,而电气设备和纺织品反倾销强度较小;并在此基础上分析了反倾销的贸易转移效应,结果表明除矿产品外的其余产品的贸易转移效应均与反倾销强度表现出不一致性;其原因大致包含:产品竞争力、出口增速、与欧盟产品价差、该产品出口对欧依赖程度、欧盟对中国进口依赖程度、进口替代国多少等因素。最后,本文指出应对欧盟对华反倾销的政策措施应基于其反倾销强度和贸易转移效应并因产品而异。     

Discriminatory tariffs and international negotiations

Recent research has highlighted the efficiency of the MFN principle within the GATT/WTO structure. This paper analyzes the exception made to MFN within Article XXIII that allows discriminatory punishment for deviations from the agreement. We argue that, in the absence of collusion, the MFN exception reduces the severity of punishment and thus lowers the level of cooperation that can be achieved by the agreement. However, discriminatory punishment may still be beneficial as we show that it reduces the problems associated with the potential for renegotiation during the punishment phase. Finally, we argue that our results are also applicable to the question of whether to use trade policy sanctions as a means of enforcing agreements covering domestic policies.     

中国-东盟自由贸易区下中国的静态贸易效应——基于引力模型的实证分析

本文介绍了双边贸易和贸易效应引力模型的研究进展,指出本文的创新之处。然后,通过建立两个引力模型进行实证研究得出结论。中国—东盟自由贸易区下中国的静态贸易效应中贸易转移效应远远大于贸易创造效应,而且贸易创造效应和贸易转移效应之间的差额逐年增长。最后,本文对此做出了解释,并建议未来的研究内容可以集中分析某一特定产业的贸易效应。     

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.     

Trade creation and diversion effects in the Mediterranean area: Econometric analysis by gravity model

Since the early 1990s, the world has seen a proliferation of free trade agreements (FTAs). A major goal of free trade is to develop trade between its signatories. The gravity model is used to analyze the bilateral trade data against the variables of the relative size of the pair of countries involved in trade, distance, common border and language and dummies for each of the FTAs. This article focuses on the studying of the influence of the FTAs in the Mediterranean countries in which we integrate the role of the regional dummy EU-15, Economic and Monetary Union (eurozone), the Arab Maghreb Union and AGADIR Agreement (FTA between Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco) in trade flows. In addition, this work aims to detect the impact of the global financial crisis on export flows between the FTAs in the Mediterranean region. The use of regional variables in gravity models designed to determine whether the FTAs contribute to the creation or trade diversion. This study examines a cross section and panel (static and dynamic) of 27 countries for 1980–2011. The results show the existence of a strong relationship between the factors of FTAs and trade flows.     

Price equivalent tariffs and quotas under a domestic monopoly

Price-equivalent import tariffs and quotas are compared when domestic production is controlled by a monopolist, say an agricultural marketing board with the power to restrict domestic supply, under endogenous terms of trade. Welfare comparisons boil down to sourcing costs comparisons. Quotas tend to dominate at high domestic prices, ad valorem tariffs at intermediate prices and specific tariffs at low domestic prices. Welfare maxima are achieved with more restrictive policies than under perfect competition. These results rationalize separate negotiations for sensitive products in the Doha Round and the setting of tariff-rate quotas that mimic import quotas for these products. Finally, in ascertaining the robustness of our policy ranking to the choice of variable anchoring the comparisons, we found that specific tariffs unambiguously dominate ad valorem tariffs and quotas when government revenue or imports anchor the comparisons. However, some quota revenues and import levels cannot be achieved with tariffs.     

从贸易角度探讨我国的贸易摩擦与对策

由于世界经济发展的不平衡及贸易利益分配的不一致,国家之间的贸易摩擦日趋激烈。特别是我国经济的快速增长,使我国与其他国家的贸易摩擦不断蔓延和升级,对我国出口的持续发展带来重大威胁,而且对宏观调控和对外政治外交关系造成严重干扰。本文从贸易角度探讨了目前我国贸易摩擦频发的原因以及应采取的对策,指出我国应实施提高国际竞争力的贸易战略。     

Non-equivalent pass-through of anti-dumping duties,countervailing duties and import tariffs

We directly compare the short-run pass-through of tariffs, anti-dumping (AD) duties and countervailing (CV) duties into US import prices. Consistent with the theoretical predictions, we find clear pattern of non-equivalence in import price reaction to the three duty types, with the most notable difference detected between AD duties and tariffs. According to our estimates, a tariff rate would have to be approximately two times higher than an AD duty rate in order to have the same effect on the delivered import price.     

Trade liberalization and informality nexus: Evidence from Pakistan

This study investigates the impact of trade openness on informal sector employment during the drastic 1988s trade reforms of Pakistan. It is generally perceived that increased external competition in less developed countries results in as an expansion in informal sector, which has less compliance with labor market regulations. Using micro-level data of Pakistan, we study the adjustments in the employment of informal sector due to trade openness. We find that informality and trade openness are associated. In Pakistan, trade reforms have given rise to employment in the informal sector. Our findings are robust to different trade-related measures. A substantial flexibility in labor market is required to benefit from the gains of liberalization.