We analyze China's tariff rates at WTO accession using a political economy approach. A model drawing on Branstetter and Feenstra (<link/>) is used to derive an optimal tariff rate for each industry. The model predicts that a government would set a high tariff rate if an industry is of large stateowned...

Trade barriers can cause output to be diverted to other countries and into other products. We study the effect of a voluntary price restraint (VPR) on Mexican tomatoes entering the United States. The diversion caused by the VPR is statistically and economically significant - representing over...

Some supporters of antidumping have argued that this procedure serves as a kind of `safety valve' for protectionist pressure. In this paper, we investigate whether there is empirical evidence that the use of antidumping actions has contributed to ongoing tariff reductions over the period 1988 to...

In this paper the changes in trade patterns introduced by the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement are examined. Variation in the extent of tariff liberalization under the agreement is used to identify the impact of tariff liberalization on the growth of trade both with member countries and...

In a two-country Hotelling type duopoly model of price competition, we show that parallel import (PI) policy can act as an instrument of strategic trade policy. The home firm's profit is higher when it <i>cannot</i> price discriminate internationally if and only if the foreign market is sufficiently...

The European Community (EC) operates a multi-layered GSP scheme in which different groups of developing countries are granted varying degrees of market access. This paper analyzes the question of trade diversion among different categories of beneficiary countries ensuing from the selectivity of...

This paper uses a large French firm-level data set to evaluate the determinants of location choices in services. In a first step, estimates for four broad services sectors are compared with the estimates for the manufacturing sector. Using a discrete choice model, we find that this framework...

Some cultural goods are consumed socially and are characterized by the same consumption network externalities as languages. Also, producers of new cultural goods in any one country draw on the stock of ideas generated by previous cultural production in all countries. For such goods, costless...

South-South trade agreements are proliferating. Yet the impact of these agreements is largely unknown, as existing North-North and North-South micro-level studies are likely to yield misleading predictions for South-South trade agreements. This paper estimates the impact of COMESA on Uganda's...

We study U.S. agricultural antidumping and countervailing duty cases from 1980 to 2005, and gauge the effectiveness of trade remedy law as a form of protection. The purpose is to measure the resulting investigation and trade diversion effects. Previous research on trade in manufactured products...