Import Liberalization and Import Tariff Yield in Ghana: Estimating Tariff Buoyancy and Elasticity

Import Response to Tariff Reductions in an African Sample

Policy-makers and analysts are often concerned with the effect of tariff reductions, as part of trade liberalisation, on the volume of imports, and in particular adverse effects on domestic import-competing sectors. While there is limited evidence at an aggregate country level that imports increase following trade liberalisation, there is very little empirical evidence at a sector level. In the...

Non-Tariff Barriers and Trade Liberalization∗

This paper shows that governments have no incentive to introduce non-tariff barriers when they are free to set tariffs but they do when tariffs are determined cooperatively. We then show three results. First, with trade liberalization, there is a progression from using tariffs only to quotas, and to antidumping constraints (when quotas are jointly eliminated). Second, there is a narrowing of th...

Alternative Approaches to Reciprocal Tariff Liberalization

Trade Liberalization, Tariff Overhang and Antidumping Filings in Developing Countries+

It has been argued that antidumping (AD) facilitates trade liberalization by serving as a release valve for protectionist pressure. We focus on a group of prominent ADusing developing countries and examine the validity of the pressure release hypothesis. The fact that these new AD users generally began using AD after significant trade liberalization supports the hypothesis. Yet, if pressure exi...

The Socially Optimal Import Tariff and Tax Credit for Ethanol with Farm Subsidies

We determine how the U.S. ethanol tax credit and import tariff affect the corn-ethanol-gasoline markets and how farm subsidies interact with these policies. We show how the ethanol tax credit and import tariff each uniquely affect the ethanol and gasoline prices. The ethanol import tariff alone increases the terms of trade in ethanol imports and corn exports, but decreases the terms of trade in...