IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/att/wimass/9405.html

A Theory of Gradual Trade Liberalization

Author

Listed:
  • Staiger, R.W.

Abstract

This paper proposes a theory of gradual trade liberalization. I consider countries that are limited to self-enforcing arrangements in their trade relations. I argue that enforcement problems associated with the maintenance of low cooperative tariffs are exacerbated by the presence of resources in the import-competing sector that are (or potentially could be) earning rents from their sector-specific skills. Intuitively, by being able to transform into rents a portion of what otherwise would be dead weight loss under a tariff hike, the presence of such resources makes deviation from a low cooperative tariff to a high tariff more desirable for the deviating country, and makes punishments under reciprocally high tariffs less painful. Hence, the presence of rent-collecting resources in an import-competing sector acts as a deterrent to trade liberalization. But if an initial "round" of liberalization can induce at least a portion of these resources in the import-competing sector to relocate to the rest of the economy, and if by not using their sector- specific skills these resources stand to lose them, then the enforcement issues associated with their presence will also diminish over time, and further rounds of liberalization are made possible by the effects of the initial round. I formalize this gradual process of trade liberalization, and explore the consequences of a failed round of liberalization for the ability to maintain current levels of cooperation.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Staiger, R.W., 1994. "A Theory of Gradual Trade Liberalization," Working papers 9405, Wisconsin Madison - Social Systems.
    • Handle: RePEc:att:wimass:9405
    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
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Emanuel Ornelas, 2000. "Free Trade Areas with Politically Active Oligopolies," Econometric Society World Congress 2000 Contributed Papers 1457, Econometric Society.
    2. Richard E. Baldwin, 2011. "Multilateralising Regionalism: Spaghetti Bowls as Building Blocks on the Path to Global Free Trade," Chapters, in: Miroslav N. Jovanović (ed.), International Handbook on the Economics of Integration, Volume I, chapter 2, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    3. Bagwell,K. & Staiger,R.W., 2000. "GATT-think," Working papers 19, Wisconsin Madison - Social Systems.
    4. Michael Lusztig & Patrick James, 2004. "How Does Free Trade Become Institutionalized? An Expected Utility Model of the Chretien Era," University of Western Ontario, Economic Policy Research Institute Working Papers 20044, University of Western Ontario, Economic Policy Research Institute.
    5. Zissimos, Ben, 2007. "The GATT and gradualism," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(2), pages 410-433, April.
    6. Bac, Mehmet & Raff, Horst, 1997. "A theory of trade concessions," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(3-4), pages 483-504, May.
    7. Giovanni Maggi & Andrés Rodríguez-Clare, 2007. "A Political-Economy Theory of Trade Agreements," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(4), pages 1374-1406, September.
    8. Antoni Estevadeordal & Caroline Freund & Emanuel Ornelas, 2008. "Does Regionalism Affect Trade Liberalization Toward Nonmembers?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(4), pages 1531-1575.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;

    JEL classification:

    • F1 - International Economics - - Trade
    • F2 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:att:wimass:9405. 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: Ailsenne Sumwalt (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.