政治竞争与相互直接投资

This paper investigates a basic question about the international political economy—why is international trade not free? To answer this question, we modified Grossman and Helpman (1994) by considering that interest lobbies make political contributions to both the incumbent government and the political challenger in order to influence the incumbent government’s choice of trade policy. By examining the contribution schedules under a framework of bilateral direct investments, we find that the modified Ramsey rule still holds under our setting.     

Modelling seasonality in residential water demand: the case of Tunisia

This article proposes to model seasonal patterns of residential water demand using the techniques of seasonal integration and cointegration. The methodology is applied to quarterly aggregate time series data for Tunisia (1980–2007), applying the same increasing, multi-step pricing scheme in the whole country. First, a seasonal cointegration analysis demonstrates the relevance of a pricing policy that increases the size of the lower consumption block in summer. Second, the nonseasonal cointegration analysis reveals a relatively high price elasticity for the highest consumption block. Therefore, we also propose to increase the tariff progressivity to promote water savings. This modified pricing scheme will help to achieve goals of environmental protection and social equity.     

碳关税对我国出口贸易的影响及对策研究

欧美的拟征碳关税作为一种新型的贸易壁垒,必将会对我国出口贸易和经济发展产生重要影响。本文全面分析这些影响。认为必须发展绿色贸易和低碳贸易,加快企业"走出去"步伐,以跨越碳关税的贸易壁垒,促进我国出口贸易及可持续发展。     

WTO subsidy rules and tariff liberalization: evidence from accession of China

Countries increasingly rely on subsidies to assist their producers leading to concerns about their potential misuse. The WTO regulates its members’ subsidies by defining subsidies that are permissible, as well as by providing means to retaliate against subsidies of partner countries if these subsidies hurt one's interest. However, these subsidy rules might have an unintended effect. As both subsidies and tariffs are substitute instruments of protection, tighter subsidy rules might lead to a decrease in the pace of tariff liberalization. In this paper, we present first empirical evidence in support of this prediction. Using China's accession to the WTO in 2001 as a case study, we show that China's accession to the WTO was associated with a relative increase in its tariffs for products that faced a higher threat of retaliation against subsidies. More importantly, we also show that increases in tariff were larger in products with higher potential costs imposed by retaliation. Finally, we include several robustness tests as well as conduct two counterfactual exercises to verify that the results we obtain are indeed due to perceived threat of retaliation against subsidies.     

Potential FDI causing large distortions in domestic production

When a foreign firm enters a domestic market, either via exports or through foreign direct investment (FDI), one factor determining the most favourable entrance mode is the profitability of the market, which may not be directly observed by the foreign firm. If the domestic trade protection policy is within a certain range that causes the foreign entrant's decision to swing between the two entry modes, the final choice will depend on the foreign firm's belief about the profitability. In such a situation, a domestic incumbent firm wishing to prevent FDI will heavily distort its production downward to convince the foreign competitor that the market is not profitable. When making trade policy, such strategic behaviour on the part of the domestic firm should be taken into account.     

The Welfare Effects of U.S. Most-Favored-Nation Tariff Treatment of Exports From China: An Empirical Inquiry *

This Study provides estimates of the elasticities of the U.S. import demand for Chinese goods and of China's export supply to he U.S. and China of granting Most-Favored-Nation (MFN) tariff treatment for China's exports. In general, if Washington denies MFN status to Beijing, Sino-American commercial as well as political relations world be seriously harmed. [F13, F14]     

美国碳关税政策的政治经济学分析——基于美国国内利益集团与政府博弈的视角

美国的政治体制和贸易政策形成的机制,表明其碳关税政策是国内利益集团和政府博弈均衡的结果。文章在Grossman-Helpman(1994)销售保护模型的基础上,建立碳关税博弈模型,构建利益函数对利益集团和政府的行为进行博弈模拟。结果显示,如果美国政府是一个自利政府,同时存在利益集团政治捐献的情况下,政府出于自身利益最大化的考虑会提高碳关税税率,以保护利益集团和自身的利益。同时,利益集团在政府收益函数中的权重越高(即政府获得的政治捐献越高),碳关税政策将更多地受到利益集团游说的影响。     

DEVELOPMENT OF REGIONAL SOCIAL ACCOUNTING MATRICES WITH DETAILED AGRICULTURAL LAND RENT DATA AND IMPROVED VALUE-ADDED COMPONENTS FOR THE USA

We describe a method for creating social accounting matrices (SAMs) with detailed agricultural land rent data for any arbitrary subset of the 48 contiguous states in the USA. Data on land use and land rents from various public sources is merged with national accounts data. The method reorganizes the rental income of persons concept present in national accounts to payments to conventional primary factors of production. This method also reallocates portions of the indirect business tax account to the appropriate sales and import tax accounts. SAMs created using this method should be useful inputs into input–output or computable general equilibrium models explicitly representing a heterogeneous land market and analyzing the economic effects of agricultural, bioenergy, water and climate policies on land-use change, land rents, agricultural commodity markets, trade and households’ welfare. The method's implementation is freely available, enabling others to rapidly create SAMs with their own desired region and sector aggregations.