Rules Versus Discretion in Trade Policy: An Empirical Anaylsis

在经济政策理论、宏观经济学、公共财政和贸易政策中，关于规则效力与自由裁量权的辩论受到了极大的关注。但现有的文献几乎完全集中在这场辩论的理论方面。迄今为止，几乎没有实证研究表明规则和自由裁量权之间的区别在现实世界中有多大的相关性。出于两个原因，贸易政策特别适合对这些问题进行实证调查。首先，该理论对自由裁量权下选择的贸易政策与规则下选择的贸易政策有何不同做出了非常敏锐的预测。其次，也许更重要的是，美国的贸易政策是在各种制度安排下实施的。其中一些安排的主要区别在于它们提供的承诺技术。因此，通过比较在这些不同环境中实施的政策，人们可以检查承担具有约束力的政策承诺的能力是否重要。本项目是对政府自由裁量权对贸易政策决策影响的实证探索。关于时间一致性贸易政策的理论文献表明，政府自由裁量权可能适得其反，依赖一套简单的贸易政策规则可能比赋予贸易政策制定者高度的政策自由裁量权更好。本研究的前提是，在逃避条款行动（1974年美国贸易法第201条）的背景下做出的关税决定，以及在东京回合谈判下确定关税削减的排除情况，形成了一种自然实验，可用于评估政策自由裁量权对贸易政策决定的影响。前一种决策是在政府拥有高度自由裁量权的环境下做出的，相对于那些受政府选择影响的生产要素的分配决策而言。后一项决定是在相当长的一段时间后才实施的，因此是在政府相对于相关要素分配决策几乎没有自由裁量权的情况下做出的。本研究的目的是分析两种环境下政府决策的差异，并询问是否存在系统性差异，这表明贸易政策自由裁量权导致政府陷入次优时间一致关税均衡。这个问题的答案对经济政策，特别是贸易政策有着非常重要的影响。如果发现这两种环境导致系统性不同的政策，就意味着在规则下执行的政策往往主导在自由裁量权下选择的政策；因此，提供承诺技术的机构将是有价值的。如果这两种环境导致类似的政策，或者导致在理论预测之外的维度上不同的政策，则会得出相反的结论。

The debate on the efficacy of rules versus discretion has received a great deal of attention in the theory of economic policy, in macroeconomics, public finance and in trade policy. But the existing literature has focussed almost exclusively on theoretical aspects of this debate. To date there has been virtually no empirical study of how relevant the distinction between rules and discretion is in the real world. Trade policy lends itself particularly well to an empirical investigation of these issues, for two reasons. First, the theory yields very sharp predictions of how a trade policy chosen under discretion differs from that chosen under rules. Second, and perhaps more important, trade policy in the U.S. is implemented under a variety of institutional arrangements. A major difference among some of these arrangements is the commitment technologies that they provide. Hence, by comparing the policies implemented within these different environments, one can examine whether the capacity to undertake binding policy commitments matters or not. This project represents an empirical exploration into the effects of government discretion on trade policy decision-making. The theoretical literature on time-consistent trade policy suggests that government discretion may be counter productive, and that reliance on a simple set of trade policy rules may be preferred to endowing trade policy makers with a high degree of policy discretion. This research proceeds on the premise that tariff decisions made in the context of escape clause actions (section 201 of the United States Trade Act of 1974) and the determination of exclusions from the tariff reductions negotiated under the Tokyo Round form a natural experiment that can be used to assess the impact of policy discretion on trade policy decisions. The former decisions were made in an environment in which the government possessed a high level of discretion relative to the allocation decisions of those factors of production affected by the government choice. The latter decisions were implemented only after a substantial time lag, and were thus made in a setting in which the government possessed little discretion relative to the relevant factor allocation decisions. The aim of this study is to analyze differences in the government decisions made in each of the two environments, and to ask whether or not systematic differences exist which would suggest that trade policy discretion leads governments to be trapped in sub-optimal time-consistent tariff equilibria. The answer to this question has very important implications for economic policy and for trade policy in particular. A finding that the two environments lead to systematically different policies would imply that policies conducted under rules tend to dominate policies chosen under discretion; as a consequence a institutions providing a commitment technology would be valuable. The opposite conclusions would be reached if instead the two environments led to similar policies or to policies that differed on dimensions other than those predicted by theory.