Trade Bargaining with Externalities, Imperfect Competition and Rules versus Power: Interpreting and Evaluating the Rules of the GATT/WTO

从经济角度理解贸易谈判并非易事。在贸易条件驱动的囚徒困境框架中，贸易协定能够解决的根本国际低效率问题与政府单方面保护进口竞争部门时，贸易条件变动带来的成本转移有关。通过将这种保护的部分成本转移到外国出口商身上，每个政府都过度保护了与进口竞争的部门，相对于考虑到其潜在偏好和其他政府偏好的国际效率而言。其结果是，在没有贸易协定的情况下，全球市场准入太少。从这个角度来看，贸易协定的目的是将市场准入扩大到有效的水平。在我们提议的研究中，我们关注关贸总协定/世贸组织谈判的三个不同方面：存在多方外部性的双边关税谈判；就关税进行讨价还价，同时保持对国家竞争政策的单方面控制；更广泛的选择是基于规则还是基于权力的谈判论坛。这种对贸易协定作用的描述很简单，但也很普遍，适用于各种各样的政治经济环境。但即便如此，如何构建最有效的贸易谈判仍是一个问题。碰巧的是，世界贸易组织（WTO）及其前身关贸总协定（GATT）并不仅仅是一个在效率边界上执行某一点的协议。相反，关贸总协定/世贸组织是一个由一套规则形成的谈判论坛，在这些规则的约束下，成员国政府可以在他们喜欢的时间、内容和对象上进行谈判。这些规则可能对议价结果有重要影响，并可能发挥重要的提高效率的作用。在我们提议的研究中，我们关注关贸总协定/世贸组织谈判的三个不同方面：存在多方外部性的双边关税谈判；就关税进行讨价还价，同时保持对国家竞争政策的单方面控制；更广泛的选择是基于规则还是基于权力的谈判论坛。

Understanding trade negotiations from an economic perspective is not an easy task. Within a terms-of-trade driven Prisoner's dilemma framework, the fundamental international inefficiency that a trade agreement can solve relates to the cost-shifting that arises through terms-of-trade movements when governments protect import competing sectors unilaterally. By shifting some of the costs of this protection on to foreign exporters, each government over-protects its import competing sectors relative to what would be internationally efficient in light of its underlying preferences and the preferences of other governments. The result is that there is too little market access in the world in the absence of a trade agreement. From this perspective, the purpose of a trade agreement is to expand market access to efficient levels.In our proposed research, we focus on three distinct aspects of GATT/WTO bargaining: bilateral tariff bargaining in the presence of multiparty externalities; bargaining over tariffs while maintaining unilateral control over national competition policies; and the broader choice of a rules-based versus power-based negotiating forum.This characterization of the role of trade agreements is quite simple, yet it is also quite general, applying to a wide variety of political-economy settings. But even given this characterization, there is still the question of how trade negotiations might be structured most effectively. As it happens, the World Trade Organization (WTO) - and GATT, its predecessor organization created in 1947 - is not simply an agreement to implement a particular point on the efficiency frontier. Rather the GATT/WTO is a negotiating forum that is shaped by a set of rules, and subject to these rules member governments are then left to negotiate when, what and with whom they please. These rules may have important implications for the bargaining outcomes, and they may play important efficiency-enhancing roles. In our proposed research, we focus on three distinct aspects of GATT/WTO bargaining: bilateral tariff bargaining in the presence of multiparty externalities; bargaining over tariffs while maintaining unilateral control over national competition policies; and the broader choice of a rules-based versus power-based negotiating forum.