Economic Integration, Non-tariff Barriers and Social Welfare

Tariff and Non-Tariff Barriers to Trade

that restrict trade between countries in agricultural commodities. Many of these policies are now subject to important disciplines under the 1994 GATT agreement that is administered by the World Trade Organization (WTO). The paper is organized as follows. First, tariffs, import quotas, and tariff rate quotas are discussed. Then, a series of non-tariff barriers to trade are examined, including v...

Non-Tariff Barriers, Integration, and the Trans-Atlantic Economy

Non-Tariff Barriers and Trade Liberalization∗

This paper shows that governments have no incentive to introduce non-tariff barriers when they are free to set tariffs but they do when tariffs are determined cooperatively. We then show three results. First, with trade liberalization, there is a progression from using tariffs only to quotas, and to antidumping constraints (when quotas are jointly eliminated). Second, there is a narrowing of th...

Economic Efficiency and Social Welfare

A framework for the optimal taxation of cigarettes based on economic efficiency is provided here. Fundamentally different views of smoking in the context of addictive behavior result in markedly different estimates of the efficient cigarette tax rate. Based on the rational addiction model, more than half of the states may have increased their cigarette excise tax rates to levels beyond the econ...

Economic integration, democracy and the welfare state

The present difficulties of democratic welfare states in Europe are often ascribed to economic "globalization", that is to the world-wide integration of markets for capital, goods and services which has eliminated national control over boundary-crossing economic transactions, and which therefore exposes national producers to world-wide competition. In fact, however, globalization in the strict ...