Showing 1 - 10 of 11
We provide a first formal analysis of the international rules that govern the use of subsidies to domestic production. Our analysis highlights the impact of the new subsidy disciplines that were added to GATT rules with the creation of the WTO. While GATT subsidy rules were typically viewed as...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005241020
The authors propose a unified theoretical framework within which to interpret and evaluate the foundational principles of GATT. Working within a general equilibrium trade model, they represent government preferences in a way that is consistent with national income maximization but also allows...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005241578
According to the terms-of-trade theory, governments use trade agreements to escape from a terms-of-trade-driven prisoner's dilemma. We use the terms-of-trade theory to develop a relationship that predicts negotiated tariff levels on the basis of pre-negotiation data: tariffs, import volumes and...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10009144832
The authors introduce a model of the retail firm in which consumers and active firms benefit collectively from coordination of sales at fewer firms. Using this model, the authors show that ostensibly uninformative advertising plays a key role in bringing about coordination economies by directing...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005240944
We characterize the design of an optimal trade agreement when governments are privately informed about the value of tariff revenue. We show that the problem of designing an optimal trade agreement in this setting can be represented as an optimal delegation problem when a money burning instrument...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010815467
A new welfare-enhancing role is identified for a policy of export subsidization in a new-product industry. An export-subsidy policy promotes the (rational) perception that a high-quality export can be provided at a relatively low price. Thus, an export subsidy generates a first-order benefit to...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005820158
This paper proposes a theory that predicts low levels of protection during periods of "normal" trade volume coupled with episodes of "special" protection when trade volumes surge. This dynamic pattern of protection emerges from a model in which countries choose levels of protection in a repeated...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005571819
High and declining prices signal a high-quality product. High prices are the efficient means of signaling, because the consequent loss of sales volume is most damaging for lower-cost, lower-quality products. As time passes and the number of informed consumers increases, the signaling distortion...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005573015
According to the terms-of-trade theory, negotiations over tariffs alone, coupled with an effective market access preservation rule, can bring governments to the efficiency frontier. In this paper, we show that the nature of international price determination is important for this central result...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010549011
We propose a model of trade agreements in which contracting is costly, and as a consequence the optimal agreement may be incomplete. In spite of its simplicity, the model yields rich predictions on the structure of the optimal trade agreement and how this depends on the fundamentals of the...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10008622177