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

贸易协定的贸易条件理论认为，贸易协定对政府是有用的，因为它是帮助政府摆脱贸易条件驱动的囚徒困境的一种手段。在国际投资委员会以前的工作中，国际投资委员会对这一理论进行了扩展，以解释和评估WTO的设计。这项工作为互惠原则、最惠国规则和报复性关税在维持自我执行的贸易协定中的作用提供了一种经济解释。PI还将该理论扩展到评估拟议和实际的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。有了基本的理论框架，这项建议向前推进，并考虑三个基本问题。首先，该理论是否有实证支持？虽然最近的一些工作提供了重要的证据，但据国际和平研究所所知，还没有人试图对贸易协议贸易条件理论的核心预测进行实证调查，即政府利用贸易协议来摆脱贸易条件驱动的囚徒困境。在过去理论工作的基础上，PI对这一预测进行了描述：在非合作的纳什均衡中，一种产品的进口量相对较大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减免。然后，PI制定了一项经验性战略，首先观察到一些国家在乌拉圭回合中首次限制了他们的关税。在将这些国家在回合开始时报告的(非约束性)关税解释为其非合作关税时，国际和平研究所建议对这样一种假设进行实证调查，即在乌拉圭回合结束时，对某一特定产品的进口在世界出口中所占份额较大的国家也为该产品提供更大的减让(从价关税减免)。他们的初步经验发现为贸易条件理论提供了支持，并对我们的基本经验策略提出了几个重要的扩展。尽管信息不对称模型在其他领域产生了许多见解，但很少有人注意到私人信息考虑在贸易协定的设计和执行中可能发挥的作用。这种遗漏可能反映了这样一个事实，即贸易协定是自我执行的，直到最近才开发出博弈论工具，用来在具有私人信息的动态博弈中得出预测。因此，国际和平研究所的第二个关键问题是：纳入私人信息是否会产生对世贸组织规则的新解释和评估？为了解决这个问题，国际和平研究所提出了一种重复的贸易政策游戏，在这种游戏中，各国政府私下观察到了政治冲击。然后，利用这一模型，国际和平研究所对弱约束性规则和世贸组织保障协定提出了新的解释。国际贸易委员会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。鉴于这些关切，私人投资委员会提出了第三个问题：贸易条件理论对已经提出的关于世贸组织数字信号处理器的关键关切有何影响？公安局首先考虑的是墨西哥的提议，即报复性权利可以交易。这一建议来自于一种担忧，即数字信号处理器对小国和发展中国家无效。为了更好地理解墨西哥提议的潜在影响，PI构建了一个拍卖报复性权利的模型。私人投资公司建议根据收入和效率标准评估不同的拍卖形式。审议世贸组织关于补贴和反补贴措施的协定(《SCM协定》)。这里的一个令人担忧的问题是，该协定可能会阻止使用补贴，而补贴可能是实现合法国内目标(如稳定农民收入)的有效手段。贸易条件理论为这一担忧提供了一些支持，国际和平研究所提出的研究将突出强调“再平衡”的替代方法的优势。PI提出的建议是，强调再平衡的数字信号处理器将体现一个来自法律和经济学的熟悉概念：高效违约。更广泛的影响：国际和平研究所预计，他们的经验工作将为贸易条件理论建立一个经验基础，并鼓励对这一理论的预测进行一些新的经验评估。他们提出的关于具有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，对数字信号处理器的分析将为有关世贸组织最佳设计的重要和正在进行的辩论提供建设性的理论投入。新的理论工作还将提供方法论上的贡献，为其他贸易政策理论家今后的工作提供便利。国际法学会还将继续发展与世贸组织法律学者的互动，以便从他们的专业知识中获益，并为他们的研究提供机会，在法律界找到影响力。最后，PI将在各自的研究生贸易课程中教授拟议的研究，他们将继续培养博士生，他们的研究分析世贸组织的经济学。

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.