MEASURING PROTECTION: MISSION IMPOSSIBLE?

Abstract.  There seems to be some confusion between 'openness' and 'protection' measures in the international trade literature. The aim of this paper is to bring together the state of the art in quantifying trade policy measures and, for this reason, we focus on the extent of the protection granted by policies rather than on the degree of openness of the economy. Given the considerable amount of literature that deals with these issues, we will limit our review as follows. On the one hand, we focus on trade policies implemented at the border and therefore do not consider all the other possible public interventions influencing trade flows. On the other hand, we only take into account indexes that explicitly adopt a metric expressed in a 'scalar aggregate' (tariff- and quota-equivalent measures, or an index in a closed interval). We distinguish between indexes that aggregate across products (same barrier for more products) and indexes that aggregate across instruments (more barriers for the same product). Finally, in order to classify the large number of indexes covered in our review, we propose a typology based on three categories: incidence, outcome and equivalence.     

博弈理论与区域经济合作实践

将博弈论的理论方法应用到区域经济合作实践的分析中,从博弈的角度来理解全球化背景下发展起来的"新地区主义"区域贸易协定,分析区域经济合作发展过程中的矛盾现象及合作中的博弈问题,以期为讨论中国参与区域贸易协定争取政治经济利益最大化提供借鉴.     

Tariff rate quotas: structural and stability impacts in growing markets

This paper examines several aspects of tariff rate quotas (TRQ) as adopted during tariffication of agricultural policies under the Uruguay Round of GAIT. Quota rents and non-tariff barrier effects may remain under TRQs, contrary to the objectives of the tariffication process. Further, price stability impacts of a TRQ are more complex than those for either tariffs or quotas, and under certain circumstances TRQs may be more stabilizing than either case, since TRQs truncate domestic production distributions much like price bands policies. This complexity results from the possibility of regime switching, and may reflect behavior under either a tariff, a quota, or a combination of cases. A TRQ policy may affect the timing of import decisions based on incentives created under quota allocation procedures envisioned for this institution. It may also allow increased imports as demand growth occurs because the quota is not necessarily a binding constraint. This means the above quota tariff is the critical policy instrument. An empirical study of Philippines port: imports illustrates these issues.     

An economic assessment of the Common Market Organization for bananas in the European Union

The main objective of this paper is to provide some estimates of how the world banana market has been affected by the Common Market Organization (CMO) for bananas established in the European Union (EU) on 1 July 1993, and modified in April 1994. We quantify the effects of the new EU regulation on world and EU prices, on the structure of EU imports from Latin American countries, African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries and EU regional suppliers, on the pattern of consumption in the various EU member states, and on consumers' and producers' welfare using a static partial equilibrium model of the world banana market. Simulation results suggest that the two key variables in determining the effects of the CMO are the size of the tariff quota on dollar and non-traditional ACP bananas and the capacity of ACP countries to exhaust their ACP contingent share.     

FTA背景下市场规模、产品差异与关税保护——基于空间经济学模型的解析

在缔结自由贸易协定(FTA)时,大多数缔约方对本方竞争力弱的产业往往采取关税保护措施。在确定需要保护的本方产业时大多数缔约方往往采用贸易竞争度等方法而忽略考虑了缔约双方的市场规模和产品特性。这往往会造成保护失当或达不到预期的保护效果。本文采用空间经济学模型,对市场规模、产品差异化程度与关税保护的效果之间进行模拟分析。通过分析得出:虽然关税能够防止本方产业的流出,但是对市场规模小的缔约方来说效果有限;市场规模小的缔约方无需对产品差异化程度小的产品采取高关税保护措施而只需对产品差异化程度大的产品采取高关税保护措施。     

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.     

WTO《服务贸易总协定》下报复机制之实证研究

WTO成立以来,共有三起争端涉及GATS项下的报复问题。成员对服务业实施报复的能力、GATS规则解释上的不确定性、GATS四种服务提供模式的结构、服务贸易与外国直接投资的交叉等,使报复的实际进行非常复杂。为有效实施GATS项下的报复,发展中成员必须兼顾报复之经济影响与政治影响:经济影响只是一个方面,必须重视制造政治影响,选择曝光率高且具有政治影响力的服务部门进行报复,促使发达成员执行WTO争端裁决。     

低碳规则对我国国际收支的潜在影响

我国以低端产品进入国际市场的外汇创收模式以及FDI对加工贸易的青睐,造就了国际收支顺差形成中的高碳经济因素。碳关税的全面实施会通过进出口渠道和长期资本流入渠道影响我国的国际收支。为了避免碳关税对出口和FDI的过度冲击,我国政府应大力推动贸易部门生产方式的绿色化转型;同时应实现碳关税向国内碳税的转变,并通过免费配额、出口补贴等政策措施,降低碳税对我国出口竞争力的影响。     

Disagreement points in trade negotiations

This paper analyzes trade negotiations between two large countries in the framework of an alternating-offer bargaining model with endogenous interim disagreement actions. Despite of the flexibility in disagreement tariff selection, the countries would keep the status quo tariffs in disagreement periods as far as the country which benefits from keeping the status quo tariffs compensates for the other country’s foregone gains from deviating in disagreement actions. Each equilibrium outcome converges to a corresponding Nash bargaining solution whose disagreement point reflects the status quo tariff rates as well as the threat of raising the tariff to the Nash tariff rate.     

Protection of trade for innovation: the roles of Northern and Southern Tariffs

Using a North–South trade model with innovation and imitation, we investigate the interaction of intellectual property rights (IPR) protection and trade protection. We show that unlike a Southern tariff, a Northern tariff supplements IPR protection and is not necessarily a beggar-thy-neighbor policy. The globally optimal Northern tariff increases as IPR protection in the North or the South decreases. Global welfare may rise as Northern tariff increases, but necessarily declines as Southern tariff increases. This suggests that pushing for freer trade in the South is more urgent than in the North in innovation-intensive sectors where IPR protections are weak in both regions.