The theory of effective protection a critique

Summary A linear two-by-two general equilibrium model of international trade has been developed with international mobility of capital goods and capital funds. By means of this model the consequences of imposing an ad valorem tariff on imported inputs and imported consumption have been investigated. Special attention has been paid to the consequences of a differentiated tariff structure for total imports.The analysis leads to the conclusion that in the present model a unique relation between the differentiated tariff structure and the effective protective rate does not exist.In many respects this article draws heavily upon my doctoral dissertation:Heterogeen kapitaal en internationale handel, mimeographed, Tilburg, 1973     

Assessing the effects of Japanese industrial policy change during the 1960s

This paper provides a systematic analysis of the effects of the industrial policy change in the 1960s in Japan. We utilize a panel of 227 manufacturing industries between 1960 and 1969. We find that on the one hand, the removal of de facto import quotas had significantly negative effects on real output, real output per establishment, and employment. On the other hand, for those industries where import quotas were removed, tariff protection was effective in maintaining real output and employment. However, this does not necessarily mean the success of industrial policy change because neither tariff protection nor the removal of quotas contributed to productivity growth. In that sense, the industrial policy change had limited effects.     

Determinants of shrimp importation into the USA: an application of an augmented gravity model

Shrimp farmers in the USA are facing the situation of increased imports resulting in reduced market share, falling prices, and reduced profitability for their farm-raised shrimp. The study examined the determinants of shrimp imports from China, Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia using an augmented gravity model of international trade. The results reveal that US imports from the four exporting countries are significantly affected by the GDP of exporting countries, GDP of the USA, exchange rate, unit import value (proxy for import price) of shrimp, and tariff. Tariff policy has implications for the US shrimp industry.     

Optimal commercial policy with imperfect foreign supply

Conclusion Maximizing social welfare when there is one foreign firm requires the imposition of fixed domestic price, which results in increased imports from the foreign firm until it engages in marginal cost pricing. A license fee captures (replaces) the foreign firm's economic profit (loss). Extension to the case where foreign supply consists of more than one firm differs from the one-firm analysis in that, while optimale policy consists of the setting of both a license fee and price level for the import, this may entail levying a tariff on imports from the foreign firms. The fee or tariff, but not both, may be negative.     

China's skill-biased imports

China has witnessed rapid increases in the skill premium over the last few decades. In this paper, we study the short-run effect of capital goods imports on skill premium in China. The surge in capital goods imports, which embody advanced technology, can explain the rising demand for skill in China. We exploit regional variations in capital goods import exposure stemming from initial differences in import structure and instrument for the capital goods import growth using exchange rate movements. A city at the 75th percentile of the distribution of capital goods imports growth has a higher skill premium by 5 percentage points (0.38 standard deviation) over the one at the 25th percentile. To explore the underlying mechanism, we provide firm-level evidence and show that imported capital goods are skill-complementary.     

Mixed Oligopoly,Privatization, and Strategic Trade Policy

This paper investigates the effects of privatization in the presence of strategic trade policies within an international mixed oligopoly serving a single market. If the government uses a domestic production subsidy, then welfare is always increased with privatization, while the optimal subsidy falls. If the government uses an import tariff, privatization increases welfare over much of the parameter space. The optimal tariff, however, may rise or fall.     

The importance of ‘natural’ barriers to trade among developing countries: Some evidence from the transport cost content in Brazilian imports

The paper applies a cif/fob import value comparison of Brazilian imports in order to check the argument of freight rate advantages for North-South shipping against South-South shipping in competing products and to estimate the relation between freight rates and tariff rates in total nominal protection of Brazil against imports from developing countries.The findings suggest that a freight rate advantage for North-South shipping exists in manufactured products, being significant for three of eight analysed regional trade flows. The second result is that tariff rates hamper Brazillian imports from developing countries much more than do freight rates.     

International mobility of capital,wage indexation,and the cost of policy mistakes under ambiguity: a CGE evaluation

In this paper we focus on the role institutions and structural parameters play in macroeconomic policy design and test the differential effects of tax policies on two structural parameters: the degree of international capital mobility and the rules of wage indexation practiced in the economy. We evaluate counterfactual changes in taxation in the Argentine economy using a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) Model with unemployment, calibrated with 2006 data, showing that policy mistakes (diagnosis failures) are costlier when the degree of capital mobility is greater and the rules to determine salaries could amplify the losses. Among other taxes, we evaluate the choice of export taxation, historically one of the preferred revenue sources of Argentine governments. We discuss the choice of taxes that an optimistic and a pessimistic policymaker will make under Knightian uncertainty and find that, in the case of our CGE, an optimistic policymaker prefers to tax export goods, while a more pessimistic one tends to tax imports or non-tradable goods.     

An eye for an eye? The trade and price effects of China's retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports

We analyze the trade and price effects of China's retaliatory tariffs on imports from the United States in the period from January 2017 to May 2019. We apply the difference-in-differences approach to the up-to-date China Customs data on imports disaggregated by eight-digit HS product category and source country. We find large reductions in the value and quantity of imports from the US and an almost complete tariff pass-through onto import prices. These results remain robust to extensive changes in the specification and in data sample and to a variety of placebo tests using processing imports or exempted products that were originally included in the tariff lists but removed before implementation. We also find that the trade and price effects are heterogeneous across products, differing either in the end-use or in the ownership types of the importing firm. Similar to recent findings in the US (Amiti et al., 2019, Amiti et al., 2020), our estimates suggest limited terms-of-trade gain due to China's tariff hikes.     

Unprotective Tariffs,Ineffective Liberalization,and Other Mysteries: An Investigation of the Endogenous Dimensions of Trade Policy Formation in Australia

At the forefront of research on Australia's trade policies two items have attracted considerable interest: (1) the endogeneity of tariff concessions and (2) the impact of liberalization on imports. Studies that investigate the former examine the impact of import penetration on tariffs, and studies that explore the latter consider the effect of tariffs on import penetration. Despite the simultaneity of these variables, research lines (1) and (2) followed separate paths by only considering unidirectional causal relationships. And yet, these paths do converge. The meeting point: perplexing results! Tariffs are found to protect those industries that have the least use for protection, and liberalization is often determined to be entirely ineffectual in stimulating imports. The present article explains that the source of such puzzling results is found in the misspecification of the employed frameworks of analysis, which ignore relevant feedback effects. When reciprocal causation is addressed in the analysis, the estimated impact of import penetration on the tariff level increases by almost fivefold and that of tariffs on import penetration more than doubles.     

The antebellum U.S. iron industry: Domestic production and foreign competition

This paper presents new annual estimates of U.S. production of pig iron and imports of pig iron products dating back to 1827. These estimates are used to assess the vulnerability of the antebellum iron industry to foreign competition and the role of the tariff in fostering the industry’s early development. Domestic pig iron production is found to be highly sensitive to changes in import prices. Although import price fluctuations had a much greater impact on U.S. production than changes in import duties, our estimates suggest that the tariff permitted domestic output to be about 30-40 percent larger than it would have been without protection.     

Measuring trade creation effects of free trade agreements: Evidence from wine trade in East Asia

East Asia has experienced an unprecedented expansion in its wine market over the past two decades. This paper examines the extent to which import tariff reductions through bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) have contributed to an increase in wine imports to Japan, China, and South Korea. Our empirical method involves estimating an augmented version of the gravity equation by the Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood (PPML) technique. Analyzing a panel dataset for 1990–2016 covering 27 exporters, we find that overall a 1 percentage point reduction in tariff among FTA member countries is associated with an increase in the wine import volumes by 0.042%, which is seven times higher than a similar reduction in tariff on an MFN basis. The strongest trade creation effects are founded for bottle wine. The results are robust to various specifications.     

The Leontief paradox in a multi-country setting: Comments

Conclusions Apart from the commodity mix effect, exports, imports consumption and production respond identically to changes in relative capital endowment, regardless of whether one refers to physical capital, human capital or total capital. Hence, when allowing technology and product mix to vary, one cannot distinguish between export goods and import goods in terms of capital intensity. These conclusions are still in agreement with Hirsch [1977, p. 418] who argues “Poor countries export low capital-intensive and import high capital-intensive goods, while rich countries import low capital-intensive and export high capital-intensive goods.” The only response that is significantly different is due to the commodity mix effect.     

What information is needed for welfare-enhancing policies under international oligopoly?

In the framework of international Cournot oligopoly, we analyze welfare-enhancing policies when policymakers have only limited information on demand and cost structures. We show that even if policymakers have no idea about costs and demand, they can raise welfare by introducing a small production subsidy. If the government knows that demand is not very convex, a small tariff can be used to enhance welfare. With strategic complements, a small import reduction by an import quota deteriorates welfare while a small increase in the number of domestic firms improves welfare. In other cases, some more information is required to determine right policies.     

RCEP关税减让对各成员国的经济影响分析

大幅度削减成员国间关税是RCEP协议的核心内容,为了揭示RCEP成员国间关税减让的经济影响,文章首先分析了RCEP成员国间贸易现状、产品结构、进口关税和贸易竞争力,然后,运用GTAP模型模拟RCEP关税减让对各成员国宏观经济和产出的影响,得到结论如下：（1）RCEP关税减让可以缓解中美贸易摩擦对于中国经济的不利影响;（2）就短期而言,RCEP成员国间关税减让可以提高中国、日本、韩国和澳大利亚的GDP、社会福利、居民收入和消费水平等宏观经济效益,同时,还可以提高中国、韩国、澳大利亚、东盟的总产出水平;（3）就长期来说,实施零关税可能显著提升RCEP大多数成员国的宏观经济效益和产出水平。     

Measuring the usage of preferential tariffs in the world

The preference utilization ratio, i.e., the share of preferential imports out of total imports, has been a popular indicator for measuring the usage of preferential tariffs vis-à-vis tariffs on a most-favored-nation basis. A crucial shortcoming of this measure is the data requirements, particularly for data on imports classified by tariff schemes, which are not available in most countries. This study proposes another measure for preference utilization, termed the “tariff exemption ratio.” This measure is a good proxy for the value of offered preferences by each importing country to the rest of the world. Importantly, it can be computed by employing only publicly available data, such as those provided by the World Development Indicators, for its computations. We can thus calculate this measure for many countries for an international comparison. Our finding is that tariff exemption ratios differ widely across countries.     

进口贸易提高了中国制造行业出口技术含量吗?

中国自发达国家进口以中间品和资本品为主,在全球垂直专业化分工中参与程度较深。本文利用出口收入指数方法计算结果显示,2001～2010年中国制造行业的进口收入指数高于出口收入指数,贸易结构表现为进口高技术含量产品、出口低技术含量产品的特征。面板数据计量检验结果表明,中国自发达国家进口显著地促进了中国出口产品的技术水平,而且这一促进作用在高垂直专业化程度行业、高R&D经费支出行业更为明显。我国制造业应着力改善国内的要素条件,加大R&D经费投入,加快物质资本折旧和更新速度,提高国内行业对进口技术溢出的吸收能力。     

进口贸易、人力资本与技术溢出

进口贸易是国际技术扩散的重要渠道。本文以广东省为例,通过一个扩展的LP模型和协整分析方法研究了省内研发投入和进口贸易对全要素生产率的影响。结果发现,在不考虑人力资本变量时,进口贸易对全要素生产率的提高没有任何贡献;而在考虑到人力资本的动态吸收能力时,进口贸易则对全要素生产率具有正向的促进作用,但其作用随着进口技术系数的提高而缓慢下降。     

A suggested reformulation of the theory of optimal currency areas

In contrast to conventional analyses of monetary union between two particular countries or sets of countries, this paper treats the possible expansion of a given currency area as a continuous variable ranging from zero to one; zero if there is no expansion and one if all sources of imports and competition in trade are included in the union. The optimal order in which new members are admitted to the union then becomes a central aspect of the problem. Along with other advantages, this approach makes it easier to defend the argument that many nations are too small for form optimal currency areas. The demands upon the origin of the shocks, factor mobility, and political organization are smaller.     

More on tariffs vs. import quotas

This paper uses the offer-curve approach to analyze the welfare effects of a tariff and of the static-equivalent quota in a country which experiences changes in its import demand. For a small country, a tariff is always superior to the static-equivalent quota when it experiences an increase in its import demand. On the other hand, a tariff is always inferior to the static-equivalent quota when it experiences a decrease in its import demand. However, one cannot rank a tariff and the static-equivalent quota from a welfare standpoint in a large country. This is true whether the large country experiences an increase or a decrease in its import demand.