IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/pal/palchp/978-0-230-11460-9_3.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Why Empirical Data Cannot Tell Us What to Do about Policy

In: A Moderate Compromise

Author

Listed:
  • Steven Suranovic

Abstract

Economic theory strongly supports the following two conclusions: first, trade liberalization will result in a complex redistribution of income; and second, depending on the circumstances, trade liberalization can lead either to an improvement or to a reduction in a nation’s total welfare. Although theory can identify some of the characteristics of those who might gain and lose, without careful empirical measurement, it is impossible to know precisely who will gain and lose how much from freer trade. Whether national welfare rises or falls is important too, since economists often assuage the income redistribution concerns by suggesting that compensation be given to the losers from trade, drawn from the extra benefits accruing to the winners. However, the only way to ensure that everyone gains from free trade after compensation is if there is a positive national welfare effect from trade liberalization.

Suggested Citation

  • Steven Suranovic, 2010. "Why Empirical Data Cannot Tell Us What to Do about Policy," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: A Moderate Compromise, chapter 0, pages 43-65, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-11460-9_3
    DOI: 10.1057/9780230114609_3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-11460-9_3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.