Search Results
Journal Article
An introduction to the WTO and GATT
This article reviews the history of GATT and the WTO. It discusses the founding principles of the post-WW II world trading system--reciprocity and nondiscrimination. Lastly, the article reviews the economics literature on regional trade agreements and administered protection, two important exceptions to GATT's requirement in trade policy.
Working Paper
Import protection, business cycles, and exchange rates: evidence from the Great Recession
This paper uses highly detailed, quarterly data for five major industrialized economies to estimate the impact of> macroeconomic fluctuations on import protection policies over 1988:Q1?2010:Q4. First, estimates on a pre-Great Recession sample of data provide evidence of two key relationships. We confirm that appreciations in bilateral real exchange rates lead to substantial increases in antidumping and related forms of import protection: e.g., a 4 percent appreciation results in 60?90 percent more products being subject to import protection. We also provide evidence of a previously overlooked ...
Journal Article
Understanding the evolution of trade deficits: trade elasticities of industrialized countries
In this article, the authors present updated trade elasticities?measures of how much imports and exports change in response to income and price changes?for the U.S. and six other industrialized countries, collectively known as the Group of Seven. They find that the imports and exports of these countries are slightly more responsive to changes in a country?s total income over a period that ends in 2006, compared with a period that ends in 1994.
Working Paper
Do safeguard tariffs and antidumping duties open or close technology gaps?
This paper examines how the country-breadth of tariff protection can affect the technology adoption decisions of both domestic import-competing and foreign exporting firms. The analysis is novel in that shows how firm-level technology adoption changes under tariffs of different country-breadth. I show that a country-specific tariff like an antidumping duty induces both domestic import-competing firms and foreign exporting firms to adopt a new technology earlier than they would under free trade. In contrast, a broadly-applied tariff like a safeguard can accelerate technology adoption by a ...
Working Paper
Policy externalities: how U.S. antidumping affects Japanese exports to the EU
This paper investigates the international externalities associated with US use of antidumping (AD) measures by examining the relationship between US AD duties (ADDs) and Japanese exports to the US and EU over the 1992-2001 period. We first examine the trade destruction and trade diversion associated with Japanese exports to the US market resulting from US AD duties. We then investigate whether US ADDs impose externalities on a non- targeted third country by examining the effect of these US policies on Japanese exports to the EU. We document sizable trade deflection and trade depression in the ...
Working Paper
Cyclical dumping and U.S. antidumping protection: 1980-2001
In this paper, I test the theory that weak economic conditions in a foreign economy cause cyclical dumping, i.e., the temporary sale of products in a trading partner's economy at a price below average total cost. Although I am unable to observe prices or costs directly, a novel identification strategy allows me to uncover evidence of cyclical dumping. Using country- specific information on foreign economic shocks in manufacturing industries, filing decisions by the US industry, and antidumping decisions by the US government, I am able to identify strong evidence of cyclical dumping. After ...
Working Paper
Emerging economies, trade policy, and macroeconomic shock
This paper estimates the impact of macroeconomic shocks on the trade policies of thirteen major emerging economies over 1989-2010; by 2010, these WTO member countries collectively accounted for 21 percent of world merchandise imports and 22 percent of world GDP. We examine determinants of carefully constructed, bilateral measures of new import protection imposed at the extensive margin. New import restrictions on products arise through the temporary trade barriers (TTBs) ? antidumping, safeguards, and countervailing duties ? that have become some of the most important time-varying trade ...
Working Paper
Why are safeguards needed in a trade agreement?
This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on the use of safeguards in a trade agreement. It then analyzes the available data on the use of safeguards by WTO members to examine two hypotheses in the economics literature, that safeguards improve welfare by facilitating tariff reductions and that safeguards improve welfare by providing insurance against adverse economic shocks. I find that countries which undertook larger tariff reductions during the Uruguay Round conducted more safeguards investigations after the WTO was established. However, this result is not robust across ...
Working Paper
Trade deflection and trade depression
This is the first paper to empirically examine whether the United States' imposition of a special import restraint distorts foreign exports and thus affects world trade flows. We first develop a theoretical model of worldwide trade in which the imposition of a special import restraint by one country - an antidumping duty or a safeguard measure - causes significant distortions in world trade flows. We then empirically test this model by investigating the effect of US special import restraints on Japanese exports of roughly 3500 commodities into 29 countries between 1992 and 2001. Our ...