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

摘要提案编号：SES - 1326940题目：多边贸易谈判：理论和证据，从关贸总协定谈判记录NSF程序：经济学主要研究员：斯泰格，罗伯特W.随着世贸组织的十年之久的多哈回合多边贸易谈判的绳索，了解贸易谈判的性质从来没有比现在更重要的世界贸易体系。与此同时，从任何现实世界的讨价还价设置的大规模现场数据的可用性是非常不寻常的，它创造了一个重要的研究机会，阐明更普遍的讨价还价的做法。由于这两个原因，WTO最近公布了GATT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。本研究将把GATT的谈判记录转化为研究者可以使用的形式，开始将这些数据与GATT/WTO的制度特征相结合，开发和验证谈判理论，并评估可能改进的谈判协议。GATT/WTO关税谈判有几个显著的特点。首先，这些谈判是易货贸易的一种形式，即政府接受对本国进口关税的承诺，以换取其主要贸易伙伴的互惠关税承诺。第二，每一轮谈判都采用特定的谈判协议，对事件的时间安排、预期的互动类型和参与者之间的信息交换都有明确的规则。最后，虽然关贸总协定/世贸组织是一个多边机构，但在大多数情况下，它对多边谈判采取了双边办法，根据这种办法，互惠谈判（关税）在一段时间内在两个国家之间自愿发生，这些双边谈判的结果随后通过一项非歧视性要求而被“认可”为GATT/WTO的全部成员，即关税必须遵守最--关贸总协定的前四轮谈判从1947年持续到1956年，涉及800多对谈判国，达成了65，000多项关税削减协议。在每一轮谈判中，关税谈判采取的形式是两个国家就多个关税细目同时进行双边谈判，所有谈判都受制于与最惠国待遇原则有关的潜在外部性。对于每一个双边国家对，谈判记录包括关税要求、出价和还价的顺序，以及最终商定的关税承诺（或无法达成协议的声明）。当时的著作强调了《关贸总协定》早期回合中的贸易谈判挑战，这些挑战在现代有明显的对应：解决优惠关税的存在问题（如联合王国的英联邦贸易惯例所体现的），处理谈判国之间关税水平的不对称问题（源自特定回合谈判桌上的新来者），探讨与最惠国待遇相关的潜在谈判外部性（采用主要供应商规则和关税减让在谈判伙伴之间分摊等技术），以及面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研究用数据后，本项目将开始对优惠贸易安排是否会成为多边贸易自由化的绊脚石或基石、关税不对称是否会给谈判带来困难、各国如何应对潜在的谈判外部性、谈判失败的原因等问题进行评估。该项目还将显示，在某些条件下，谈判数据可以用来恢复潜在的政治偏好的参与国政府和构建完整的信息效率边界，对实际的GATT回合的结果可以判断和反事实的谈判协议的性能可以评估。

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.