We revisit the cost of the U.S. sugar program by analyzing the welfare implications of its removal. We use a multimarket model of U.S. sweetener markets, which includes raw crops, sugar extraction and refining, high-fructose corn syrup, and sweetener users (food-processing industries and final consumers). Our approach addresses the industrial organization of food industries using sweeteners and...

Article history: Received 3 March 2009 Received in revised form 14 July 2009 Accepted 3 September 2009 Available online 14 October 2009 Tariffs and anti-dumping duties are two important tools used to protect industries from foreign competition and to generate revenue. While the two tools have been studied extensively in separate contexts, little is known about their comparative effects. This pa...

This paper investigates the cross-occupation effect of offshorability on wage rates by examining the occupation switching behavior of workers previously employed in highly offshorable occupations. Instead of looking at the labor market for occupations that are traditionally vulnerable to import competition, we study the destination occupations for the workers displaced from import-competing sec...

We study the effects of reforms in the legal scope of patent rights (PRs) on the international pattern of sectoral exports, before and after implementation of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement at the World Trade Organization (WTO), in a generalized factor-proportions framework. We find that, conditional on factor endowments and intensities, a country wi...

Building on the experience of NAFTA, and assuming that rules of origin (RoO) negotiated under NAFTA are likely to resemble those that would be agreed upon in an FTAA, this paper discusses how different RoO criteria would affect different Southern partners in a multi-stage production setting. Next, we use a combination of parametric and non-parametric methods to estimate the costs of RoO under N...

We use microdata collected at the border and store to characterize price impact of recent US trade policy on importers, exporters, consumers. At border, import tariff pass-through is much higher than exchange rate pass-through. Chinese exporters did not lower their dollar prices by much, despite appreciation dollar. By contrast, significantly lowered affected foreign retaliatory tariffs. In sto...

Motivated by the proliferation of free trade agreements (FTAs) in Asia over the last decade, this paper studies the challenges faced by the Asian “noodle bowl”—overlapping, multiple trade rules, regulations, and standards in Asia—in the process of regional and global trade integration. The paper first highlights the importance of trade and investment linkages among Asian economies that have for...

In this paper we present a model of endogenous trade-policy formation which captures crucial aspects of the Japanese commercial and political culture. We analyze the influence of the portrayed cultural traits and show that cultural idiosyncrasies are important determinants of trade policy formation; especially the complex interaction of the two types of cultures is shown to have significant con...

This paper considers a world of two symmetric countries with two factors and two sectors. Outputs of the two sectors are imperfect substitutes and sectors differ in relative factor intensity. Each sector contains a continuum of heterogenous firms that produce differentiated goods within their sector. Trade is costly and there are both variable and fixed costs of exporting. The paper shows that ...

We study the impact of transnational terrorism diffusion on security and trade. We set a simple theoretical model predicting that the closer a country to a source of terrorism, the higher the negative spillovers on its trade. The idea is that security measures, which impede trade, are directed both against the source country of terror and its neighbor countries where terrorism may diffuse. In c...