IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fth/caldav/352.html

Distributing The Gains From Trade With Incomplete Information

Author

Listed:
  • FEENTRA, R.C.
  • LEWIS, T.R.

Abstract

We argue that the incomplete information which the government has about domestic agents means that tariffs become an optimal instrument to protect them from import competition. We solve for the optimal government policies. subject to the political constraint of ensuring Pareto gains from trade, the incentive compatibility constraint, and the government's budget constraint. We find that the optimal policies take the form of nonlinear tariffs, so that both buyers and sellers of the import face an effective price which exceeds its world level. We find that the tariffs are never complete, in the sense of bringing prices (or all individuals back to their initial level. Rather, it will always be possible to make some individuals strictly better off than at the initial prices, while ensuring that no persons are worse off.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Feentra, R.C. & Lewis, T.R., 1990. "Distributing The Gains From Trade With Incomplete Information," Papers 352, California Davis - Institute of Governmental Affairs.
    • Handle: RePEc:fth:caldav:352
    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. Feenstra, Robert C. & Lewis, Tracy R., 1994. "Trade adjustment assistance and Pareto gains from trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(3-4), pages 201-222, May.
    2. Margarita Katsimi & Thomas Moutos, 2005. "Inequality and Relative Reliance on Tariffs: Theory and Evidence," CESifo Working Paper Series 1457, CESifo.
    3. Anne O. Krueger, 1996. "Introduction to "The Political Economy of American Trade Policy"," NBER Chapters, in: The Political Economy of American Trade Policy, pages 1-10, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Rodrik, Dani, 1994. "What does the Political Economy Literature on Trade Policy (Not) Tell Us That We Ought to Know?," CEPR Discussion Papers 1039, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. RobertC. Feenstra, 2009. "Review 2," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(535), pages 218-223, February.
      • Robert C. Feenstra, 2009. "Review 2," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(535), pages 218-223, February.
    6. Matthew F. Mitchell & Andrea Moro, 2006. "Persistent Distortionary Policies with Asymmetric Information," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(1), pages 387-393, March.
    7. Thierry Verdier, 2005. "Intégration commerciale « socialement responsable » : une approche en termes d'économie politique," Revue d’économie du développement, De Boeck Université, vol. 13(4), pages 55-121.
    8. Nuno Limão & Arvind Panagariya, 2018. "Inequality and endogenous trade policy outcomes," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Policy Externalities and International Trade Agreements, chapter 8, pages 237-254, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    9. Andrea Moro & Matthew F. Mitchell, 2005. "Informationally Efficient Trade Barriers," Public Economics 0503004, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Devashish Mitra & Dimitrios D. Thomakos & Mehmet A. Ulubaşoĝlu, 2016. "Protection Versus Promotion: An Empirical Investigation," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: The Political Economy of Trade Policy Theory, Evidence and Applications, chapter 12, pages 221-236, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    11. Wolfgang Mayer & Raymond Riezman, 2013. "Voter Preferences for Trade Policy Instruments," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Raymond Riezman (ed.), International Trade Agreements and Political Economy, chapter 11, pages 169-183, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    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:fth:caldav:352. 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: Thomas Krichel (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.