Political Design of Trade Policy with Incomplete Information

本项目研究当一国政府对其本国公民、企业或贸易伙伴的信息不完全时，其国际和国内政策的设计。信息不完全的例子包括因贸易而流离失所的工人的迁移成本，国内或外国公司的生产成本，或国外面临的政治压力。本项目首次将激励相容机制设计理论应用于国际贸易政策问题。在这一理论中，政府或国际组织认识到各种代理人可能最优地歪曲他们所拥有的私人信息，从而使某些社会选择函数最大化。根据启示原则，政府可以通过使用揭示真相或“激励相容”的政策来实现其目标，这些政策是为了使代理人选择说出真相而设计的。在上面给出的例子中，激励相容政策将导致工人揭示他们对迁移的不利效用，或导致外国公司揭示他们的生产成本。这项研究的另一个特点是，政府基于政治利益（如投票或游说）最大化一个目标函数。所审议的具体政策问题包括：贸易和国内文书的排名；国内政策的国际调节；“现状”贸易的设计，当各国不能就一项政策达成一致时使用；当国家无法长期承诺一项贸易政策时，设计激励相容机制。

This project studies the design of international and domestic policies when a government has incomplete information about its own citizens or firms, or about its trading partners. Examples of incomplete information include the moving costs of trade- displaced workers, production costs of domestic or foreign firms, or political pressure faced abroad. The project applies for the first time the theory of the design of incentive compatible mechanisms to problems in international trade policy. In this theory, a government or international organization maximizes some social choice function, recognizing that the various agents may optimally misrepresent the private information they have. According to the revelation principle it is possible for the government to achieve its objectives by using truth-revealing or "incentive compatible" policies, i.e., policies which are designed so that the agents choose to tell the truth. In the examples given above, incentive compatible policies would lead workers to reveal their disutility of moving or foreign firms to reveal their production costs. Another feature of this research is that governments maximize an objective function based on political interests (such as votes or lobbying). Specific policy problems considered include: the ranking of trade and domestic instruments; international regulation of domestic policies; design of "status quo" trade, to be used when countries cannot agree on a policy; and design of incentive compatible mechanisms when countries cannot commit to a trade policy over time.