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不是一件容易的事。在贸易条件驱动的囚徒困境框架内，贸易协定可以解决的根本性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引起的成本转移有关。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其进口竞争部门，而不是根据其基本偏好和其他政府的偏好进行国际有效的保护。 其结果是，在没有贸易协定的情况下，世界上的市场准入太少。 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率的水平。在我们提出的研究中，我们集中在GATT/WTO谈判的三个不同方面：多边外部性存在下的双边关税谈判，在保持对国家竞争政策的单边控制的同时进行关税谈判，在多边外部性存在下的关税谈判。以及更广泛地选择基于规则的谈判论坛还是基于权力的谈判论坛。对贸易协定作用的这种描述相当简单，但也相当笼统，适用于各种各样的政治经济环境。 但是，即使有了这一特征，仍然存在如何最有效地安排贸易谈判的问题。 事实上，世界贸易组织（WTO）及其前身关贸总协定（GATT，1947年成立）并不仅仅是一个执行效率边界上某个特定点的协议。 相反，GATT/WTO是一个由一系列规则形成的谈判论坛，在这些规则的约束下，成员国政府可以根据自己的意愿，在何时、与何人进行谈判。这些规则可能会对谈判结果产生重要影响，并可能发挥重要的效率提高作用。在我们建议的研究中，我们专注于GATT/WTO谈判的三个不同方面：多边外部性存在下的双边关税谈判;在保持对国家竞争政策的单方面控制的同时进行关税谈判;以及基于规则与基于权力的谈判论坛的更广泛选择。

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.