GRADUAL TRADE LIBERALIZATION WITH SLUGGISH CAPITAL MOVEMENT

Abstract.  This paper analyses how domestic sluggish capital movement can affect multilateral trade negotiations between countries. In multilateral trade talks, including the current Doha Round of trade talks organized by the World Trade Organization, countries take steps to liberalize even though they seem to be moving towards the ultimate free trade equilibrium. This paper argues that when capital moves sluggishly between sectors in an economy, there are cases in which countries do not want to move to the ultimate free trade equilibrium immediately. Instead, they find it more beneficial if they simultaneously move gradually, with their tariffs lowered step by step.     

BILATERAL TRADE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA: IMPLICATIONS OF THE FREE TRADE AGREEMENT

This study's primary objective is to evaluate empirically the economic effects of the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement (FTA). The paper emphasizes bilateral trade flows of agricultural and industrial products between the United States and Canada, given that the FTA removes tariff and non-tariff barriers. It evaluates the FTA's impact on the two countries' trade with third countries. The paper specifies a traditional log-linear trade model consisting of import demand and export supply equations for both agricultural and industrial products. It uses quarterly time-series U.S. and Canadian trade data for 1972–1985.
The study uses the two-stage least-squares estimator to estimate the models. The models had R coefficients ranging from 0.78 to 0.99, indicating that the models' explanatory variables explain most causes of variations in the dependent variable. This study reveals that U.S. imports of agricultural and industrial products from Canada were more sensitive than were Canadian imports not only to import and domestic prices but also to world prices. This is because Canadian consumers have less domestic substitutes than do their U.S. counterparts. Also, Canada has a smaller internal market than does the United States. The study estimates that U.S. imports from Canada will increase $2.8 billion while Canadian imports from the United States will increase $1.2 billion. The impact on the two countries' trade with third-party countries will be insignificant.     

INTERNATIONAL TRADE BARGAINING AND THE MOST-FAVORED-NATION CLAUSE*

This paper advances a model of multilateral trade negotiations to analyze the effects of the most-favored-nation clause (MFN) on international trade agreements. Negotiations are modeled in a three player, non-cooperative, dynamic bargaining framework that admits the possibility of both bilateral and multilateral agreements. The central result is that bargaining in the presence of MFN results in Pareto efficient, mutually advantageous, multilateral trade agreements. The free-rider problem commonly attributed to the presence of MFN does not arise, and, under a condition of symmetry, each country receives equal gains (or reciprocity) from the agreement. In the absence of MFN, many of these properties may not hold. Examples are given in which at most two of the three countries benefit from agreement. These results suggest that many of the criticisms levied against the MFN clause are misplaced; moreover, attempts to replace unconditional MFN with conditional MFN may sacrifice many of the long-held values of the GATT.     

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF GOVERNMENT SPENDING FOR TRADE LIBERALIZATION: POLITICS OF AGRICULTURE RELATED GOVERNMENT SPENDING FOR THE URUGUAY ROUND IN JAPAN

This paper investigates the effect of political factors on the interregional allocation of the budget to assist farmers in coping with agricultural trade liberalization in Japan. We present a simple model to show the relationship between political factors and interregional budget allocation and empirically examine whether political factors played a key role in the interregional allocation of Japanese government spending for the Uruguay Round agricultural trade liberalization. Our findings show that this allocation was distorted due to political reasons, which was problematic from the standpoints of fairness and social efficiency.     

THE NUMBER OF FIRMS AND THE POLITICS OF STRATEGIC TRADE POLICY

Incorporating home firms' lobbying in a country into a third market model of oligopoly, this paper studies how such lobbying affects the government's strategic export policy scheme. We pay special attention to the home firms' lobby formation and its effect on domestic welfare. The home firms can organize a lobby more easily when the number of their rival foreign firms is larger than that of them, and/or when the government is overly concerned with political contribution relative to domestic welfare. The strategic export policy under lobbying cannot improve the domestic welfare, which depends on the number of firms, the government's concern about political donation and the level of socially wasted lobbying costs.     

关于绥芬河辟建自由经贸区的探讨

绥芬河是沿边开放的内陆口岸城镇,以单一的、且层次较低的商贸业为其主导产业。本文分析了其必然性和发展障碍,认为辟建内陆边境的自由经济贸易区应是保障持续发展的一种产业开发模式。     

COUNTERTRADE AS TRADE CREATION AND TRADE DIVERSION

This paper analyzes countertrade as a special case of a customs union in which the countertrade agreement gives rise (as in customs union theory) to both trade-creating and trade-diverting effects. The net effects on welfare are ambiguous. A detailed case study from Egypt and brief examples from other countries illustrate the relevance of this interpretation .     

DYNAMIC PROCESS ANALYSIS AND A MODEL OF THE TRADE CYCLE

In a recent article H. R. Hudson has merged real and monetary-factors to produce a comparative statics trade cycle model.¹ The present paper introduces specific dynamic relationships into the model, shows that as a result the system need not behave in the fashion described by Hudson, and argues that the model thus amended provides a more suitable explanation of post-war fluctuations.     

全球化背景下湖南省对外贸易发展对策

湖南省具有农业自然资源、有色金属资源、交通条件等方面的优势,区位条件也好于其它中西部内陆地区。改革开放以来湖南对外贸易取得了较大的发展,但与沿海发达省份相比,外贸发展滞缓,甚至和中西部某些省份比也有较大差距。文章在分析湖南对外贸易的差距基础上,对加快发展提出了一些建议。     

TRADE REFORM, THE WTO AND CHINA's FOOD ECONOMY IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

Abstract.  The main goal of the paper is to address the policy changes that accompany China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) and evaluate the various impacts of the agreement. To do so, we review the contours of past policies and describe the nature of the promises it has made to the WTO. We show that China's WTO commitments are very much an extension of past policies. Second, we show that most impacts will be relatively minor and in most cases the positive effects will outweigh the negative ones. Various institutions will buffer producers from suffering too much.     

我国钢铁产业发展及其对外贸易的政策选择

在近几年中国钢铁工业迅速发展的背景下,首先对中国钢铁产业的发展及其对外贸易的现状进行分析和阐述.接着分析了中国钢铁产业发展及对外贸易存在的问题:铁矿石价格持续上涨,出口产品结构不合理,国与国之间的贸易摩擦加剧,跨国公司并购步伐加快.随后提出了大力发展钢铁循环经济,提升我国钢铁产业的综合竞争力,提高产业集中度,以及建立反倾销预警机制这一系列扩大高端钢铁产品出口的措施.