A General Equilibrium Analysis of U.S. Foreign Trade Policy

Using applied general equilibrium methods to analyze recent debates about the conduct of U.S. foreign trade policy, de Melo and Tarr show that in terms of costs to the economy and to consumers, nontariff barriers in textiles, automobiles, and steel have more than reversed the benefits of cumulative tariff liberalization achieved in successive postwar GATT rounds.  The authors' model is the first large-scale computer simulation of the effects of changes in U.S. import quotas. It begins with perfect competition, proceeds to imperfect factor markets, and then introduces increasing returns to scale and imperfect product markets. The basic model and its variants are carefully explained to show how valuable and sensible a tool the model is for analyzing trade policy and to facilitate understanding of the construction of a general equilibrium model. Tables and figures are used extensively to illustrate the principles involved.  A detailed introduction takes up trade policy issues, argues for the superiority of a general equilibrium approach over the more traditional partial equilibrium approach, and surveys previous studies of the cost of protection. The chapters that follow describe the basic general equilibrium model and its extensions and application to specific policies and industries. The authors summarize their results by explaining the costs per job protected by quotas, the estimated costs of all quantitative restrictions, and the computation of tariffs with a welfare cost equivalent to that of quotas.

Business & Money

De Melo, Jaime

TARR, DAVID G

Economics

Mit Pr

<p>The author has virtually incomparable experience in both providing trade policy advice to more than 25 countries on behalf of the World Bank and also publishing quality journal articles in most of those cases. In this volume, he focuses on his work on: (i) trade policies for countries making the transition from planned to market economies; (ii) his trade policy guideline papers for the World Bank on trade policies for poverty alleviation, uniform tariff policy, adjustment costs of trade liberalization, exchange rate overvaluation, globalization and technology transfer and rules of thumb on regional trade policies; (iii) multilateral, dynamic and environmental issues in trade policy using computable general equilibrium models; (iv) trade policy of the United States in the auto and steel industries; and (v) mathematical methods for modeling. The papers show an unusual combination of policy relevance, advice and impact, with rigor and international trade theory insights.The papers in this volume have appeared in many of the economics profession's more prestigious journals, including Econometrica, Review of Economic Studies, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Economic Journal, the Journal of International Economics, International Economic Review, European Economic Review, Canadian Journal of Economics, Economic Inquiry, the Journal of Comparative Economic, Review of International Economics, World Economy, the Southern Economic Journal, the World Bank Economic Review, the Japanese Economic Review and the Latin American Journal of Economics. In this book, the author elaborates on the articles by discussing some of the policy contexts for the requests for the work from developing and transition countries to the World Bank, the key trade theory or policy insights, policy recommendations and conclusions and the policy impacts.</p>

TRADE POLICIES FOR DEVELOPMENT AND TRANSITION (World Scientific Studies in International Economics, 57)

World Scientific Pub Co Inc

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