Essays on International Trade Agreements and Contracts Under Renegotiation

Essays on International Trade Agreements and Contracts Under Renegotiation PDF Author: Kristina L. Buzard
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781267418838
Category : Commercial policy
Languages : en
Pages : 106

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Book Description
The first chapter of the dissertation addresses general issues in contracting with external enforcement. We study a contracting environment with specific investments in which renegotiation, and therefore hold-up, is possible. We show that taking account of the precise nature of trading and investment technologies is important for accurately determining the trading relationships in which efficient investment and trade will occur and that careful modeling of institutional detail and the information available to private parties and the external enforcement body (e.g. a court) are key. The second chapter presents a model of international trade agreements in which domestic policy-making power is shared between executive and legislative branches of government. Acknowledging the complexity of the legislative process as well as its susceptibility to lobbying reveals a political commitment role for trade agreements in that executives can use them to reduce incentives for lobbying so that the legislatures can better withstand political pressure. This helps explain the result from tests of the Grossman and Helpman (1994) model that there is too much protection relative to contributions given estimates of governments' social-welfare weights : I predict that contribution levels may in fact be low because tariffs have been raised to prevent political pressure and the increased risk of a trade disruption it engenders. The third chapter extends this model to a repeated-game framework, replacing the assumption of external enforcement with self-enforcing promises of future cooperation. Here, the inability of actors to make commitments affects the design of trade agreements in two ways: executives must not only take into account the legislatures' lobbying-driven propensity to revoke delegation and break the agreement, but also be robust to the executives' own incentives to renegotiate out of any punishment scheme. The design of the dispute resolution mechanism that makes the optimal punishment incentive compatible must balance two, often-conflicting, objectives: longer punishment periods help to enforce cooperation by increasing the costs of defecting from the agreement, but because the lobbies prefer the punishment outcome, this also incentivizes lobbying effort and with it the political pressure to break the agreement. Thus the model generates new predictions for the optimal design of mechanisms for resolving the disputes that arise in the course of trade-agreement relationships.

Essays on International Trade Agreements and Contracts Under Renegotiation

Essays on International Trade Agreements and Contracts Under Renegotiation PDF Author: Kristina L. Buzard
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781267418838
Category : Commercial policy
Languages : en
Pages : 106

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Book Description
The first chapter of the dissertation addresses general issues in contracting with external enforcement. We study a contracting environment with specific investments in which renegotiation, and therefore hold-up, is possible. We show that taking account of the precise nature of trading and investment technologies is important for accurately determining the trading relationships in which efficient investment and trade will occur and that careful modeling of institutional detail and the information available to private parties and the external enforcement body (e.g. a court) are key. The second chapter presents a model of international trade agreements in which domestic policy-making power is shared between executive and legislative branches of government. Acknowledging the complexity of the legislative process as well as its susceptibility to lobbying reveals a political commitment role for trade agreements in that executives can use them to reduce incentives for lobbying so that the legislatures can better withstand political pressure. This helps explain the result from tests of the Grossman and Helpman (1994) model that there is too much protection relative to contributions given estimates of governments' social-welfare weights : I predict that contribution levels may in fact be low because tariffs have been raised to prevent political pressure and the increased risk of a trade disruption it engenders. The third chapter extends this model to a repeated-game framework, replacing the assumption of external enforcement with self-enforcing promises of future cooperation. Here, the inability of actors to make commitments affects the design of trade agreements in two ways: executives must not only take into account the legislatures' lobbying-driven propensity to revoke delegation and break the agreement, but also be robust to the executives' own incentives to renegotiate out of any punishment scheme. The design of the dispute resolution mechanism that makes the optimal punishment incentive compatible must balance two, often-conflicting, objectives: longer punishment periods help to enforce cooperation by increasing the costs of defecting from the agreement, but because the lobbies prefer the punishment outcome, this also incentivizes lobbying effort and with it the political pressure to break the agreement. Thus the model generates new predictions for the optimal design of mechanisms for resolving the disputes that arise in the course of trade-agreement relationships.

Adaptation and Renegotiation of Contracts in International Trade and Finance

Adaptation and Renegotiation of Contracts in International Trade and Finance PDF Author: Norbert Horn
Publisher: Springer
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 452

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Book Description
Adaptation and Renegotiation of Contracts in International Trade and Finance

Essays on the Impact of Renegotiating Trade Agreements

Essays on the Impact of Renegotiating Trade Agreements PDF Author: Oliver Exton
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


Three Essays on Trade Negotiations in the WTO

Three Essays on Trade Negotiations in the WTO PDF Author: Kornkarun Kungpanidchakul
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Commercial treaties
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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Book Description


Trade Policy, Trade Agreements, and Economic Growth: Essays in International Trade Theory

Trade Policy, Trade Agreements, and Economic Growth: Essays in International Trade Theory PDF Author: Eric W. Bond
Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Company
ISBN: 9789813141841
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
This book contains the main contributions of Eric Bond in the areas of international trade policy, trade agreements, and economic growth. The central focus of this volume is the author's pioneering work on the role of differences in market power across countries in explaining incentives to join preferential trade agreements and the form of trade agreements. Other topics include the interactions of physical and human capital accumulation in determining trade patterns and growth rates and the impact of non-tariff measures on international trade and investment. The volume also gives insights into the role of firm heterogeneity in domestic and international trade.

Essays on International Trade Negotiations

Essays on International Trade Negotiations PDF Author: Patricia Anne Mueller
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 187

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Book Description
Chapter 1: I examine the welfare benefit of committing to a trade agreement when a politically-motivated government faces monopolistically competitive firms lobbying for tariff protection against imports. In my model, lobbying is costly to producers: each firm must pay a portion of the industry's upfront-lobby-formation fee as determined by a sequential bargaining game. I show that monopolistically competitive producers under-hire capital to avoid paying a larger share of lobbying costs. As a result, more varieties are produced than is socially optimal, and each firm operates at a higher-than-optimal marginal cost. Commitment to a trade agreement leads to a consolidation of firms in the market and a reduction in the tariff level. I show that a government benefits from committing to a trade agreement (i) on goods with very elastic or very inelastic demand, (ii) when the weight the government places on receiving political contributions from lobbyists is small, and (iii) when producers are strong bargainers and are able to capture the majority of the rents from protection. Chapter 2: In a model in which a small-country government faces domestic political-economy pressure and uncertainty over its terms of trade, a welfare-maximizing government benefits from having access to both rigid and flexible tariff policy options. I show that a welfare-maximizing government may prefer to join both a deep-integration regional trade agreement (helping it commit to free trade with key trading partners, thus correcting production distortions resulting from rent-seeking by politically organized sectors), and a large flexible agreement like the World Trade Organization (providing the flexibility in tariff levels and the institutional structure to pursue temporary tariff protection in response to shocks or unfair trade practices). My paper builds on the framework of Maggi and Rodriguez-Clare (1998), adding uncertainty over world prices and adding the option to join a trade agreement with the flexibility of a temporary escape clause.

Essays on International Trade Policy

Essays on International Trade Policy PDF Author: Asrat Tesfayesus
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
In the advent of WWII, artificial trade barriers had reached their 20th century peaks. Drastic protectionist measures, aggravated by a worldwide economic depression, led to the significant decline in international trade which in effect further prolonged the economic crises. However, after the end of WWII, among other serious measures taken to promote international economic integration, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was put into effect. Since 1948, the GATT has been effectively used as an instrument to gradually and substantially reduce international trade barriers. These reductions were implemented after multilaterally agreed upon reciprocal concessions were negotiated and signed during the 8 different Rounds that the GATT successfully facilitated. While the primary objective of liberalizing trade is at the essence of these rounds, what negotiators negotiate about in how to share the gains from trade that ensue is less apparent. Furthermore, the GATT as an instrument has been functioning under the auspices of the World Trade Organization (WTO) since 1995. With more countries involved and more varied tradable outputs to negotiate over, the magnitude of the pareto improving gains from trade is increasingly substantial. Since its inception, the WTO has put tremendous effort and resources to continue the process of trade liberalization. However, the Doha Round, the only WTO Round, has yet to show any substantial progress after 12 years since it began in 2001. Why member states fail to reach an agreement has yet to be answered. In this dissertation, I shed some light on both questions. First, using a select number of developing countries I provide an empirical support to the terms of trade theory; which argues that negotiators negotiate and enter into trade agreement in order to escape from a terms of trade prisoner's dilemma. Negotiators agree to reciprocally internalize externalities they impose on each other in order to create a more efficient international trade environment. Secondly, I argue that in light of the participation of a larger number of asymmetrically informed member states dealing with a much greater scope of issues that have to all be settled at once, the delay in the Doha Round completion can be explained by negotiating parties engaging in a war of attrition. A negotiator who does not know its trading partners' cost of waiting and valuation of outcome is more likely to attempt to wait it out until all trading partners concede. Consequently, the group as a whole is left with an inefficient amount of delay that could potentially be alleviated by an imposition of a strict deadline by which time an agreement has to be reached. Finally, I provide some empirical evidence to show how the war of attrition story is aggravated by the sudden proliferation in the use of Regional Trade Agreements (RTA) since the early 1990s.

Clive M. Schmitthoff's Select Essays on International Trade Law

Clive M. Schmitthoff's Select Essays on International Trade Law PDF Author: Clive Maximilian Schmitthoff
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9789024737024
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 864

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Book Description


Handbook of Commercial Policy

Handbook of Commercial Policy PDF Author:
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 0444639268
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 600

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Book Description
Handbook of Commercial Policy explores three main topics that permeate the study of commercial policy. The first section presents a broad set of basic empirical facts regarding the pattern and evolution of commercial policy, with the second section investigating the crosscutting legal issues relating to the purpose and design of agreements. Final sections cover key issues of commercial policy in the modern global economy. Every chapter in the book provides coverage from the perspectives of multilateral, and where appropriate, preferential trade agreements. While most other volumes are policy-oriented, this comprehensive guide explores the ways that intellectual thinking and rigor organize research, further making frontier-level synthesis and current theoretical, and empirical, research accessible to all. Covers the research areas that are critical for understanding how the world of commercial policy has changed, especially over the last 20 years Presents the way in which research on the topic has evolved Scrutinizes the economic modeling of bargaining and legal issues Useful for examining the theory and empirics of commercial policy

How to Design, Negotiate, and Implement a Free Trade Agreement in Asia

How to Design, Negotiate, and Implement a Free Trade Agreement in Asia PDF Author: Asian Development Bank. Office of Regional Economic Integration
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Asia
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description