Trade and direct investment in producer services and the domestic market for expertise

Abstract.  Foreign producer services can provide substantial benefits for domestic firms. We build on earlier monopolistic‐competition models of intermediate producer services in this paper. Results show that: (1) while foreign services are partial‐equilibrium substitutes for domestic skilled labour, they may be general‐equilibrium complements, (2) service trade can provide crucial missing inputs that reverse comparative advantage in final goods, (3) the 'optimal' tax on imported services may be a subsidy, and (4) in our dynamic formulation, there may be earnings losses for immobile workers along a transition path that suggest potentially important equity consequences of reform. JEL classification: F12, F16, F23     

Trade Reform in the Partially Liberalized Economy of Turkey

Recent reforms in trade policy in Turkey have produced a foreigntrade regime that exhibits very little antiexport bias on average.A quantitative, multisectoral general equilibrium model of theTurkish economy shows that piecemeal trade policy reform, basedon first-best rationales that are appropriate for highly distortedeconomies, would not now be appropriate. Further tariff reductionsmust be coordinated with export subsidy reductions to attainsignificant welfare benefits. The dispersion of distortions,especially export subsidies, is more important than their level.A policy of harmonizing tariffs to the common external tariffof the European Community has virtually no effect on welfare.     

Poverty effects of Russia's WTO accession: Modeling “real” households with endogenous productivity effects

We employ a computable general equilibrium model of the Russian economy to assess the impact of accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) on income distribution and the poor. We incorporate all 55,098 households from the Russian Household Budget Survey as agents in the model. The model includes FDI in services and Dixit–Stiglitz endogenous productivity effects in imperfectly competitive goods and services sectors, features which are crucial to the results. We show that incorporating the diversity of households though a real household model is important for assessing household impacts, but getting the key model features right is equally important.