Multilateral Trade Bargaining: Theory and Evidence from the GATT Bargaining Records

多边贸易谈判：来自关贸总协定谈判记录的理论和证据

• 批准号: 1326940
• 负责人: Robert Staiger
• 金额: $ 45.79万
• 依托单位: National Bureau of Economic Research Inc
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-08-15 至 2018-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1326940&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Multilateral; Trade; Bargaining; Theory; Evidence

AbstractProposal No: SES - 1326940 Title: Multilateral Trade Bargaining: Theory and Evidence from the GATT Bargaining RecordsNSF Program: ECONOMICSPrincipal Investigator: Staiger, Robert W.With the WTO's decade-long Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations on the ropes, understanding the nature of trade bargaining has never been more important for the world trading system. At the same time, the availability of large-scale field data from any real-world bargaining setting is highly unusual, and it creates an important opportunity for research that illuminates the practice of bargaining more generally. For both of these reasons, the WTO's recent release of tariff bargaining records for the first four GATT multilateral negotiating rounds presents a major research opportunity for economists. This research project will transform the GATT bargaining records into a form that is accessible for researchers, and begin the process of using the data in combination with institutional features of the GATT/WTO to develop and test theories of bargaining and evaluate alternative bargaining protocols for possible improvements.GATT/WTO tariff negotiations display several notable features. First, these negotiations are a form of barter, whereby governments accept commitments on their own import tariffs in exchange for the reciprocal tariff commitments of their principal trading partners. Second, for each round a specific bargaining protocol is adopted, with explicit rules for the timing of events, the kinds of interactions expected and the exchange of information among participants. And finally, though it is a multilateral institution, for the most part the GATT/WTO has adopted a bilateral approach to multilateral bargaining according to which reciprocal negotiations (over tariffs) occur on a voluntary basis through time between pairs of countries, with the results of these bilateral negotiations then "multilateralized" to the full GATT/WTO membership by a non-discrimination requirement that tariffs abide by the most-favored nation (MFN) principle.The first four GATT rounds spanned the years 1947-1956, involved more than 800 pairs of bargaining countries and resulted in over 65,000 agreed tariff cuts. In each of these rounds, the tariff negotiations took the form of simultaneous bilateral bargaining between pairs of countries over multiple tariff lines, all subject to the potential externality associated with the MFN principle. For each bilateral country pair, the bargaining records include the sequence of tariff requests, offers and counter-offers, and the eventual tariff commitments that were agreed (or a statement that agreement could not be reached). The writings of the time emphasize trade bargaining challenges in the early GATT rounds that have obvious counterparts in modern times: addressing the existence of preferential tariffs (as embodied in the commonwealth trade practices of the United Kingdom), dealing with asymmetries in the tariff levels across negotiating countries (stemming from newcomers to the bargaining table in a given round), approaching the potential bargaining externalities associated with MFN (with techniques such as the principal supplier rule and tariff concessions split across bargaining partners), and confronting the possibility of major bargaining failures (as for example the failure of the UK-U.S. bilateral in the Torquay Round). After converting these bargaining records into research-ready form, this project will use the data to begin to evaluate questions ranging from whether preferential trading arrangements create stumbling blocks or building blocks for multilateral trade liberalization, to whether tariff asymmetries pose difficulties for negotiations, to how countries deal with potential bargaining externalities, to what explains bargaining failure. The project will also show how, under certain conditions, the bargaining data can be used to recover the underlying political preferences of the participating governments and construct the complete-information efficiency frontier, against which the outcome of actual GATT rounds can be judged and the performance of counter-factual bargaining protocols can be assessed.

摘要提案编号：SES - 1326940 标题：多边贸易谈判：来自 GATT 谈判记录的理论和证据 NSF 项目：经济学 首席研究员：Staiger, Robert W.随着 WTO 长达十年的多哈回合多边贸易谈判的临近，了解贸易谈判的本质对于世界贸易体系来说变得前所未有的重要。与此同时，从任何现实世界的讨价还价环境中获得大规模现场数据都是非常不寻常的，它为更普遍地阐明讨价还价实践的研究创造了一个重​​要的机会。出于这两个原因，世贸组织最近公布了关贸总协定前四轮多边谈判的关税谈判记录，为经济学家提供了一个重要的研究机会。该研究项目将把关贸总协定谈判记录转化为研究人员可以访问的形式，并开始结合关贸总协定/世贸组织的制度特征使用这些数据来开发和测试谈判理论，并评估替代谈判协议以进行可能的改进。关贸总协定/世贸组织关税谈判显示出几个显着特征。首先，这些谈判是一种易货贸易形式，各国政府接受自己的进口关税承诺，以换取其主要贸易伙伴的互惠关税承诺。其次，每一轮都会采用特定的讨价还价协议，对事件的时间安排、预期的互动类型以及参与者之间的信息交换有明确的规则。最后，虽然关贸总协定/世贸组织是一个多边机构，但在很大程度上，关贸总协定/世贸组织采用双边方式进行多边谈判，根据这种方式，在一段时间内，两国之间在自愿的基础上进行（关税）互惠谈判，这些双边谈判的结果然后通过关税非歧视要求“多边化”，成为关贸总协定/世贸组织的正式成员。 遵守最惠国待遇（MFN）原则。关贸总协定的前四轮谈判时间跨度为1947年至1956年，涉及800多个谈判国家，达成了超过65,000项关税削减协议。在每一轮中，关税谈判都采取了多个国家之间同时就多个关税细目进行双边谈判的形式，所有这些都受到与最惠国原则相关的潜在外部性的影响。对于每个双边国家对，谈判记录包括关税请求、报价和还价的顺序，以及最终商定的关税承诺（或无法达成协议的声明）。当时的著作强调关贸总协定早期回合中的贸易讨价还价挑战，这些挑战在现代也有明显的对应：解决优惠关税的存在（如英国英联邦贸易惯例所体现）、处理谈判国家之间关税水平的不对称性（源于某一轮谈判桌的新成员）、解决与最惠国相关的潜在讨价还价外部性 （采用主要供应商规则和在谈判伙伴之间分配关税减让等技术），并应对重大谈判失败的可能性（例如托基回合中英美双边谈判的失败）。在将这些谈判记录转化为可供研究的形式后，该项目将利用这些数据开始评估一系列问题，从优惠贸易安排是否为多边贸易自由化制造绊脚石或基石，到关税不对称是否给谈判带来困难，到各国如何处理潜在的谈判外部性，到如何解释谈判失败。该项目还将展示在一定条件下如何利用讨价还价数据恢复参与国政府的潜在政治偏好并构建完全信息效率边界，以此判断实际关贸总协定回合的结果并评估反事实讨价还价协议的绩效。