It has been long recognized that in the presence of market power, positive import tariffs can be optimal. The rationale is that higher tariffs reduce import demand, which in the presence of inelastic export supply from the rest of the world allows the importing country to increase its terms of...

A rationale for cooperation in trade negotiations is the internalization of terms-of-trade externalities. With the help of a simple theoretical framework we show that the textbook prediction that non-cooperative tariffs are positively correlated to the importer’s market power is reversed when...

El objetivo de este trabajo es estimar el potencial sesgo pro-pobre en la actual estructura de protección en seis países de África Sub-Sahariana (ASS), es decir, si redistribuye ingresos de los hogares ricos a los pobres. También exploramos la medida en que las barreras que enfrentan los...

We measure the extent to which Swiss market access would be affected in a global trade war. After calculating the change in tariffs at the tariff-line level that Swiss exporters would face in a trade war, we then aggregate them at the industry, destination market, and global level using...

This paper examines the extent to which tariff cooperation is observed among World Trade Organization (WTO) members. With the help of a simple political economy model, we show that tariffs are positively correlated with the importer's market power when they are set non-cooperatively, but...

The authors have prepared this paper as a companion to the Trade and Production database, which contains trade, production, and tariff data for 67 industrial and developing countries at the industry level for 1976-99. The sector disaggregation in the database follows the International Standard...

As the economic crisis deepens and widens, fears of a return to the protectionist spiral of the 1930s become more common. However, an important difference between the 1930s and today is the existence of the World Trade Organization and the legal limits it imposes on the protectionist responses...

The objective of this paper is to provide indicators of trade restrictiveness that include both measures of tariff and nontariff barriers for 91 developing and industrial countries. For each country, the authors estimate three trade restrictiveness indices. The first one summarizes the degree of...

To study the effects of tariffs on gross domestic product (GDP), one needs import demand elasticities at the tariff line level that are consistent with GDP maximization. These do not exist. The authors modify Kohli's (1991) GDP function approach to estimate demand elasticities for 4,625 imported...