The Economics of the WTO: Empirical Assessment, Enforcement with Private Information, and Dispute Settlement Procedures

世贸组织的经济学：实证评估、私人信息执行和争端解决程序

• 批准号: 0518802
• 负责人: Robert Staiger
• 金额: $ 27.22万
• 依托单位: National Bureau of Economic Research Inc
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2005
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2005-09-01 至 2008-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0518802&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Economics; WTO; Empirical; Assessment; Enforcement

The terms-of-trade theory of trade agreements holds that trade agreements are useful to governments as a means of facilitating an escape from a terms-of-trade-driven Prisoners' Dilemma. In the PI's previous work, the PI's extended this theory in order to interpret and evaluate the design of the WTO. This work provided an economic interpretation for the principle of reciprocity, the most-favored nation (MFN) rule, and the role of retaliatory tariffs in sustaining a selfenforcing trade agreement. The PI's also extended the theory to evaluate proposed and actual WTO rules that concern labor and environmental policies, competition policies, export and domestic subsidies, and preferential trading agreements. With the basic theoretical structure in place, this proposal moves forward and considers three fundamentalquestions. First, does the theory have empirical support? While some recent work has provided important evidence, to the PI's knowledge there has not yet been an attempt to investigate empirically the central prediction of the terms-of-trade theory of trade agreements, namely, that governments use trade agreements to escape from a terms-of-trade-driven Prisoners' Dilemma. Building on their past theoretical work, the PI's provide a characterization of this prediction: countries that are relatively bigger importers of a product in the non-cooperative Nash equilibrium should agree to larger negotiated tariff reductions on that product in a trade agreement. The PI's then formulate an empirical strategy that begins with the observation that a number of countries bound their tariffs for the first time in the Uruguay Round. Interpreting the (un-bound) tariffs that these countries reported at the beginning of the round as their non-cooperative tariffs, the PI's propose an empirical investigation of the hypothesis that those countries that import a greater share of world exports for a given product at the beginning of the Uruguay Round also offer a larger concession (ad valorem tariff reduction) for that product at the conclusion of the Uruguay Round. Their initial empirical findings offer support for the terms-of-trade theory, and they propose several important extensions of our basic empirical strategy. While models of asymmetric information have generated numerous insights in other fields, very little attention has been given to the potential role that private-information considerations may play in the design and implementation of trade agreements. This omission may reflect the fact that trade agreements are self-enforcing, and it is only recently that game-theoretic tools have been developed with which to derive predictions in dynamic games with private information. The PI's second key question is thus: Does the inclusion of private information generate new interpretations and evaluations of WTO rules? To address this question, the PI's propose a repeated trade-policy game in which governments have privately observed political shocks. Using this model, the PI's then offer new interpretations of the weak-binding rule and the WTO Safeguard Agreement. The PI's also propose new work that considers the design of anti-dumping rules.The WTO dispute settlement procedures (DSP) are widely admired but also raise important concerns. In lightof these concerns, the PI's ask a third question: What are the implications of the terms-of-trade theory for key concerns that have been raised with respect to the WTO DSP? The PI's first consider the Mexican proposal that retaliation rights be made tradable. This proposal comes from a concern that the DSP is not effective for small and developing countries. To better understand the potential implications of the Mexican proposal, the PI's construct a model in which retaliation rights are auctioned. The PI's propose to evaluate different auction formats according to revenue and efficiency criteria. The PI's consider the WTO agreement on subsidies and countervailing measures (the SCM Agreement). A concern here is that the agreement may block the use of a subsidy that may be an efficient instrument with which to achieve a legitimate domestic objective (e.g., income stabilization for farmers). The terms-of-trade theory provides some support for thisconcern, and the PI's propose research that would highlight the advantage of an alternative approach that emphasizes "rebalancing". The PI's propose to show that a DSP that emphasizes re-balancing would embody a familiar notion from law and economics: efficient breach. Broader Impacts: The PI's expect that their empirical work will establish an empirical foundation for the terms-of-trade theory and encourage a number of new empirical evaluations of the predictions of this theory. Their proposed work on trade agreements with private information will generate new understandings of the benefits and possible costs of certain WTO rules and thereby offer constructive theoretical input toward the design of a better world trading system. In the same spirit, the analysis of the DSP will provide constructive theoretical input for important and on-going debates with regard to the optimal design of the WTO. The new theoretical work will also provide methodological contributions that should facilitate future work by other trade-policy theorists. ThePI's will also continue to develop their interactions with WTO legalscholars, in order to gain from their expertise and provide opportunity for their research to find influence in legal circles as well. Finally, the PI's will teach the proposed research in their respective graduate trade classes, and they will continue to produce Ph.D. students whose research analyzes the economics of the WTO.

贸易协定的贸易条件理论认为，贸易协定对于政府来说是有用的，可以作为摆脱贸易条件驱动的囚徒困境的一种手段。在PI之前的工作中，PI扩展了这一理论，以解释和评估WTO的设计。这项工作为互惠原则、最惠国 (MFN) 规则以及报复性关税在维持自我执行的贸易协定中的作用提供了经济学解释。 PI 还扩展了该理论，以评估拟议的和实际的 WTO 规则，这些规则涉及劳工和环境政策、竞争政策、出口和国内补贴以及优惠贸易协议。在基本理论结构到位的情况下，该提案向前推进并考虑了三个基本问题。首先，该理论有实证支持吗？虽然最近的一些工作提供了重要证据，但据PI所知，尚未尝试对贸易协定的贸易条件理论的核心预测进行实证研究，即政府利用贸易协定来摆脱贸易条件驱动的囚徒困境。基于他们过去的理论工作，PI 提供了这一预测的特征：在非合作纳什均衡中相对较大的产品进口国的国家应该同意在贸易协定中对该产品进行更大幅度的谈判关税削减。然后，PI 制定了一项实证策略，该策略首先观察到许多国家在乌拉圭回合中首次限制了关税。将这些国家在回合开始时报告的（非约束性）关税解释为非合作关税，PI提出了一项实证调查，假设乌拉圭回合开始时进口特定产品占世界出口份额较大的那些国家也在乌拉圭回合结束时对该产品提供更大的让步（从价关税削减）。他们最初的实证研究结果为贸易条件理论提供了支持，并且他们提出了我们基本实证策略的几个重要扩展。虽然不对称信息模型在其他领域产生了许多见解，但很少有人关注私人信息因素在贸易协定的设计和实施中可能发挥的潜在作用。这种遗漏可能反映了这样一个事实：贸易协定是自我执行的，而且直到最近才开发出博弈论工具，可以用私人信息在动态博弈中进行预测。因此，PI 的第二个关键问题是：纳入私人信息是否会产生对 WTO 规则的新解释和评估？为了解决这个问题，PI 提出了一种重复的贸易政策游戏，各国政府私下观察政治冲击。然后，PI 使用该模型对弱约束规则和 WTO 保障协定提供新的解释。 PI还提出了考虑反倾销规则设计的新工作。世贸组织争端解决程序（DSP）受到广泛赞赏，但也引起了重要关注。鉴于这些担忧，PI 提出了第三个问题：贸易条件理论对于 WTO DSP 提出的关键问题有何影响？ PI 首先考虑墨西哥关于报复权可交易的提议。这一提议的提出是出于对 DSP 对小国和发展中国家无效的担忧。为了更好地理解墨西哥提案的潜在影响，PI 构建了一个拍卖报复权的模型。 PI 建议根据收入和效率标准评估不同的拍卖形式。 PI 考虑 WTO 关于补贴和反补贴措施的协议（SCM 协议）。这里的一个担忧是，该协议可能会阻止补贴的使用，而补贴可能是实现合法国内目标（例如农民收入稳定）的有效工具。贸易条件理论为这种担忧提供了一些支持，PI提出的研究将强调强调“再平衡”的替代方法的优势。 PI 提议表明，强调再平衡的 DSP 将体现法律和经济学中的一个常见概念：有效违规。更广泛的影响：PI期望他们的实证工作将为贸易条件理论奠定实证基础，并鼓励对该理论的预测进行一些新的实证评估。他们提出的关于使用私人信息的贸易协定的工作将使人们对某些世贸组织规则的好处和可能的成本产生新的理解，从而为设计更好的世界贸易体系提供建设性的理论投入。本着同样的精神，DSP 的分析将为有关 WTO 优化设计的重要且持续的争论提供建设性的理论输入。新的理论工作还将提供方法论贡献，以促进其他贸易政策理论家未来的工作。 ThePI 还将继续发展与 WTO 法律学者的互动，以便从他们的专业知识中获益，并为他们的研究提供在法律界产生影响力的机会。最后，PI 将在各自的研究生贸易课程中教授拟议的研究，并且他们将继续培养博士学位。研究分析世贸组织经济学的学生。