The paper analyses theoretically what role fiscal councils could play and surveys empirically the activities of existing councils. Case studies of the Swedish Fiscal Policy Council and the UK Office for Budget Responsibility are done. It is concluded that fiscal councils should be advisory,...

Did austerity cause Brexit? This paper shows that the rise of popular support for the UK Independence Party (UKIP), as the single most important correlate of the subsequent Leave vote in the 2016 European Union (EU) referendum, along with broader measures of political dissatisfaction, are...

We explore how outcomes of trade policy retaliation (Nash tariff games) are affected when trade simultaneously takes places geographically across countries and through time via financial intermediation. In such models deficits and surpluses in goods trade are endogenously determined, and...

WTO negotiations deal predominantly with bound - besides applied - tariff rates. But, how can reductions in tariffs ceilings, i.e. tariff rates that no exporter may ever actually be confronted with, generate market access? The answer to this question relates to the effects of tariff bindings on...

Countries can reduce global emissions by reducing own consumption since they are linked to the total value of consumption world wide. Two effects are at issue: a utility loss from forgone consumption and a utility gain from lowered temperature change. It is thus unclear whether own country...

When Vietnam entered WTO in 2007 it was granted an accession period up to 2014. During this period tariffs would have to fall according to the accession agreement. This paper evaluates this 2007-2014 trade liberalization by building an applied general equilibrium model and calibrating it to the...

This paper explores the role of trade instruments in globally efficient climate policies, focusing on the central issue of whether border tax adjustment (BTA) is warranted when carbon prices differ internationally. It shows that tariff policy has a role in easing crosscountry distributional...

We examine in detail the circumstances under which reciprocity, as defined in Bagwell and Staiger (1999), leads to fixed world prices. We show that a change of tariffs satisfying reciprocity does not necessarily imply constant world prices in a world of many goods and countries. While it is...

In this paper we examine the empirical relevance of three prominent endogenous protection models. Is protection for sale, or do altruistic policy makers worry about political support? We find strong evidence that protection is indeed for sale. The important new result is, however, that not only...