I. Introduction Trade integration in Africa is often viewed in light of the European Union and other regional integration arrangements like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). From this perspective, integration is regarded as necessarily destined to proceed on a linear path where tariffs and non-tariff barriers are progressively eliminated, the trade regimes of member countries are...

* We acknowledge helpful suggestions from a referee in preparing this article. Summary As with most agricultural products in world trade, trade in meat products is restricted by a variety of non-tariff barriers in different countries. In the case of New Zealand meat products there are quota restrictions in the USA, Canada, and EU markets and hygiene regulations of varying standards in most mark...

This paper constructs a game-theoretic model to study host country policy to attract import-substituting foreign direct investment (FDI). Investors are assumed to be incompletely informed about local investment conditions, and taxes and tariffs are determined endogenously. We show that in certain situations countries will offer tax incentives while in others they will impose a tariff wall to in...

Flat rates are a prominent pricing scheme for telecommunications services and are often preferred by consumers although average costs would be lower in an alternative usage-based tariff. Reasons are that flat rates protect against unexpectedly high costs (insurance effect), are more likely to be chosen if actual usage is overestimated (overestimation effect), and prevent any disutility that is ...

The central question addressed in this paper is whether the presence of the MFA made the NAFTA politically more acceptable. Assuming that the government maximizes a weighted sum of welfare and producer profits, we derive four key results. First, taking the initial level of trade restriction as exogenously given, it is possible for an FTA to be endorsed by both parties under the MFA-like quota i...

This paper provides benchmarks of trade restrictiveness and year-on-year changes in trade restrictiveness using the Trade Restrictiveness Index. These benchmark measures stand in sharp contrast to standard measures. For a 28 country sample the TRI is used to compare trade policy in a recent year with free trade. Trade weighted average tariffs substantially underestimate restrictiveness measured...

This paper examines how industrial policy – specifically tariff liberalization and tax subsidies – affects the magnitude and direction of FDI spillovers. We examine these spillover effects across the diverse ownership structure of China’s manufacturing sector for 1998 through 2007. We find that tariff reforms, particularly tariff reductions associated with China’s WTO ascension, increased the p...

Optimal tariffs and quotas are comgared for a large country under uncertainty. If the import supply schedule has constant elastjcity and is subject to multiplicative uncertainty and domestic demand is random then the optimal policy is a fixed +.d valorem tariff. If the supply schedule has constant elasticity but this elasticity is random then the optimal tariff is superior to the optimal quota....