We analyze the effect of the Byrd Amendment, which amended the US Tariff Act of 1930 to allow revenue from antidumping duties to be distributed to domestic import-competing firms. In an international duopoly framework it is shown that it urges the home firm to restrict output so that the foreign firm increases output and that revenue from the duties increases. Consequently, not only the home fi...

This paper uses the methodology developed in Kehoe and Ruhl (2013) to measure the change in the extensive, or new goods, margin of trade between Japan and China after China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001. The new goods account for 15.9% of Japanese exports to China and 22% of Chinese exports to Japan after trade liberalization. For the case of Chinese exports to Japan, a time...

Trade subject to predation generates externalities within and between markets. Efficient tax, infrastructure and enforcement policies internalize the net externality — more trade ⇒ fewer predators but drawn to trade at rising cost. The balance is positive (negative) as enforcement is weak (strong). Dual economies pair weak Periphery and strong Core enforcement markets. Efficient taxation and in...

Analyses of trade quotas typically assume that the quota restricts the flow of some nondurable good. Many real-world quotas, however, restrict the stock of durable imports. We consider the cases where (1) anyone is free to export against such quotas and where (2) only those allocated portions of the total quota are free to export against such quotas. Recent econometric investigations of such qu...

This paper explores the welfare consequences of foreign investment taxation in a small open economy, based on the notion that the true productivity of imported capital may be unknown to policy-makers. It is shown that while asymmetric information between capital importers and the host government precludes the use of a productivity specific policy measure, an across-the-board policy suffers from...

This paper infers the terms of trade effects of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) implemented in the 1990s. We estimate large FTA effects on bilateral trade volume in 2 digit manufacturing goods from 1990-2002, using panel data gravity methods to resolve two way causality. The terms of trade changes implied by these volume effects are deduced for 40 countries plus a rest-of-the-world aggregate using...

Using a competitive two-country two-commodity monetary model with optimizing agents in which persistent unemployment arises, this paper examines the effects of trade restrictions on consumption and employment in the two countries. When facing unemployment, a country tends to impose an import restriction so that domestic firms will increase production and raise employment. However, this policy i...

In this paper we study the optimal import policy in an oligopolistic market with a given number of quantity-setting firms. In the absence of fixed costs, we show that if the policy instrument is an import quota, the optimal policy is either free trade or autarky, while if the instrument is a tariff the optimal policy is neither free trade nor autarky. In the case of fixed costs, we show that co...

States with weak institutions can lose from trade with strong states when trade is subject to predation. The happy liberal idea of trade fostering better institutions and peace can be turned on its head. The Ricardian model of trade subject to predation offered here implies imperialism without capital, contra Marxists. Weak and poor South trades with strong and rich North. Poor South labor is a...

This paper examines the welfare implications of an existence of free trade agreements (FTAs) and customs unions (CUs) in the GATT system, in the presence of cross-foreign ownership among countries. In particular, two GATT regimes are analyzed: a pure GATT regime without any regional free trade agreements, and modified GATT regime with either an FTA or a CU. This paper argues that, when foreign ...