a game theoretic approach for optimal time of use electricity pricing demand for electricity varies throughout the day increasing the average cost of power supply time of use tou pricing has been proposed as a demand side management dsm method to influence user demands in this paper we describe a game theoretic approach to optimize tou pricing strategies gt tou we propose models of costs to utility companies arising from user demand fluctuations and models of user satisfaction with the difference between the nominal demand and the actual consumption we design utility functions for the company and the users and obtain a nash equilibrium using backward induction in addition to a single user type scenario we also consider a scenario with multiple types of users each of whom responds differently to time dependent prices numerical examples show that our method is effective in leveling the user demand by setting optimal tou prices potentially decreasing costs for the utility companies and increasing user benefits an increase in social welfare measure indicates improved market efficiency through tou pricing

estimating residential demand for electricity in greece abstract this paper examines the residential demand for electricity in greece the issues of structural stability price and income sensitivity of both long and short run residential demand for electricity in greece were examined employing monthly data over the period 1986 1999 the long run residential demand for electricity is estimated taking into account changes in weather conditions weighted by the size of the population employing multivariate framework analysis a long run residential demand function for electricity sensitive to real income price level and weather conditions is found to exist and the importance of short run deviations is presented using vector error correction model vecm estimation the empirical evidence suggests the presence of a stable residential demand for electricity in greece both in the long and short run periods and the policy implications of such a relationship are presented

tariff evasion and rules of origin violations under the canada u s free trade agreement using product level data on trade between canada and the u s this paper presents evidence of tariff evasion and violation of the rules of origin occurring under the canada u s free trade agreement cusfta it shows that more imports go unreported at the destination country when tariffs are higher consistent with the tariff evasion hypothesis this result implies that the trade creation effect of a free trade agreement may in fact be due to less underreporting further this paper shows that the larger canadian tariff preference margin for the u s is associated with more goods originating in third countries being transshipped through the u s territory for re export the preference margin is also positively correlated with the value of excess imports from the u s which qualify for preferential treatment both results suggest the presence of persistent violations of cusfta s rules of origin a l aide de donnees au niveau des produits sur les flux de commerce entre le canada et les etats unis on montre qu il y a evitement de tarif et violation des regles d origine dans les operations de l accord de libre echange canada etats unis on montre que davantage d importations ne sont pas declarees au point de destination quand les tarifs sont eleves dans l esprit meme de l hypothese d evitement de tarif ce resultat implique que l effet de creation de commerce d un accord de libre echange peut en fait etre attribuable a moins de sous declaration de plus le texte montre que les plus grandes marges preferentielles des tarifs avec les etats unis sont associees a davantage de biens en provenance de tiers pays et convoyes a travers le territoire americain pour re exportation la marge preferentielle est aussi positivement co reliee avec la valeur des importations excedentaires en provenance des etats unis qui se qualifient pour un traitement preferentiel ces deux ensembles de resultats suggerent la presence persistante de violations des regles d origine de l accord de libre echange canada etats unis

u s trade remedy law and agriculture trade diversion and investigation effects we study u s agricultural antidumping and countervailing duty cases from 1980 to 2005 and gauge the effectiveness of trade remedy law as a form of protection the purpose is to measure the resulting investigation and trade diversion effects previous research on trade in manufactured products has shown that the domestic protection offered by ad and cv duties is largely offset by trade diversion in contrast we find that for agriculture trade diversion is relatively unimportant so ad and cvd cases are very effective forms of protection for u s agriculture les auteurs etudient les cas de tarifs antidumping et de tarifs compensatoires dans l agriculture aux etats unis entre 1980 et 2005 et evaluent l efficience de cette forme de protection l objectif est de mesurer les effets resultant des enquetes et de la diversion de commerce des etudes anterieures sur le commerce de produits manufacturiers ont montre que la protection offerte par ces mesures antidumping et compensatoires etait largement contrebalancee par la diversion de commerce a contrario il appert qu en agriculture la diversion de commerce est relativement peu importante voila qui fait que les mesures antidumping et compensatoires sont des formes de protection efficientes pour l agriculture americaine

trading relations is the roadmap from lome to cotonou correct one of the reasons behind the re negotiation of the lome convention resulting in the cotonou agreement was the alleged inability of the trade provisions of lome to increase the african caribbean and pacific acp countries market share of the european union eu market the cotonou agreement may lead to the more advanced acps being granted future market access to the eu under a generalized system of preferences gsp in conformity with world trade organization wto rules to this end this paper makes a comparative analysis of the effects of the eu s lome convention and gsp on exports of developing countries using a gravity type of model the results indicate positive and statistically significant export effects of the both the lome convention and the gsp the export effects are greater in case of the lome convention throughout the study period running from 1973 to 1992 in addition the paper illustrates the eu country distribution of the export effects and shows that belgium and the netherlands ar

the not so generalized effects of the generalized system of preferences we use an empirical gravity equation approach to study how nonreciprocal trade preferences nrtps enacted mainly through the generalized system of preferences affect the exports of the beneficiary nations in line with existing studies the average trade effect stemming from nonreciprocal preferences is highly unstable across specifications however once we allow for heterogeneous effects results become robust and economically important specifically nrtps have a strong effect on the exports of beneficiaries when they are members of the world trade organization and are very poor not so poor beneficiaries also expand foreign sales but only if they are not wto members for all others the average export effects of nrtps are mute

bilateral trade flows the gravity equation and functional form the gravity equation has been frequently and successfully used for nearly thirty years to further understanding of the determinants of bilateral trade flows across countries and subsequently to analyze commercial policy measures a maintained hypothesis by the applied literature on international trade as gravity equation loglinearity is questioned in this paper since the possibility of a general functional form is open through box cox transformations using data corresponding to the sixteen oecd most developed countries from 1964 to 1987 the authors reach the conclusion that the optimal functional form is slightly yet statistically different from the loglinear form in every year of the sample and they are able to propose one unique functional form suitable for all the sample period copyright 1993 by mit press

import price elasticities reconsidering the evidence recent economic geography and trade empirical studies based on monopolistic competition suggest high levels of trade price elasticities between 3 and 1 1 however price elasticity estimations in trade equations using unit values as price proxies usually lead to lower values of around unity we show that those inconclusive results may be due to some misspecification in these equations as well as measurement errors in prices when suit able instrumental variables are used within a panel of industrialized countries we obtain high price elasticities the majority ranging from i to 13 the highest estimates correspond to industries producing homogeneous goods jel classification c2 c3 and f 1

estimating the effects of free trade agreements on international trade flows using matching econometrics abstract this paper provides the first cross section estimates of long run treatment effects of free trade agreements on members bilateral international trade flows using nonparametric matching econometrics our nonparametric cross section estimates of ex post long run treatment effects are much more stable across years and have more economically plausible values than corresponding ols cross section estimates from typical gravity equations we provide plausible estimates of the long run effects of membership in the original european economic community eec and the central american common market cacm between 1960 and 2000 and the estimates confirm anecdotal reports of these agreements effectiveness

distribution capital and the short and long run import demand elasticity the elasticity of substitution between home and foreign goods is one of the most important parameters in international economics the international macro literature which is primarily concerned with short run business cycle fluctuations assigns a low value to this parameter the international trade literature which is more concerned with long run changes in trade flows following a change in relative prices assigns a high value to this parameter this paper constructs a model where this discrepancy between the short and long run elasticities is due to frictions in distribution goods need to be combined with a local non traded input distribution capital which is good specific home and foreign goods may be close substitutes but if distribution capital is slow to adjust then agents cannot shift their consumption in the short run following a change in relative prices and home and foreign goods appear as poor substitutes in the short run in the long run this distribution capital can be reallocated and agents can shift their purchases following a change in relative prices thus the observed substitutability gets larger as time passes

a computational analysis of japan s generalized system of preferences abstract in this paper we employ a general equilibrium computational model of world trade to evaluate the generalized system of preferences gsp of japan we conclude that the japanese gsp is strongly trade creating because preferential treatment is offered primarily on products for which japan is a major world exporter however tariff concessions result in a deterioration in japan s terms of trade which lowers welfare in japan and improves the welfare of japan s major trading partners among the ldcs the gain from preferential treatment accrues primarily to the asian nics hong kong south korea singapore and taiwan

terms of trade and global efficiency effects of free trade agreements 1990 2002 this paper infers the terms of trade effects of free trade agreements ftas implemented in the 1990s we estimate large fta effects on bilateral trade volume in 2 digit manufacturing goods from 1990 2002 using panel data gravity methods to resolve two way causality the terms of trade changes implied by these volume effects are deduced for 40 countries plus a rest of the world aggregate using an endowments general equilibrium model some countries gain over 5 of real manufacturing income some lose less than 0 3 global efficiency of manufactures trade rises 0 9 based on a distance function measure of iceberg melting

the clash of liberalizations preferential versus multilateral trade liberalization in the european union there has been an explosion in the number of preferential trade agreements in the past decade preferential trade agreements are characterized by liberalization with respect to only a few partners and thus they can potentially clash with and retard multilateral trade liberalization despite this important concern with preferential trade agreements there is almost no systematic evidence on whether they actually affect multilateral trade liberalization the authors model the effect of preferential trade agreements on multilateral trade liberalization and show that preferential trade agreements slow down multilateral trade liberalization unless they have a common external tariff and allow for internal transfers next they use detailed data on product level tariffs negotiated by the european union in the past two multilateral trade rounds to structurally estimate their model the authors confirm the main prediction the european union s preferential trade agreements have clashed with its multilateral trade liberalization and find that the effect is quantitatively significant moreover they also confirm several auxiliary predictions of the model and provide new evidence on the political economy determinants of multilateral liberalization in the european union

is the wto passe the wto has delivered policy outcomes that are very different from those likely to emerge out of the recent wave of preferential trade agreements ptas should economists see this as an efficient institutional hand off where the wto has carried trade liberalization as far as it can manage and is now passing the baton to ptas to finish the job this paper surveys a growing economics literature on international trade agreements and argues on this basis that the wto is not passe rather and subject to some caveats this survey of research to date suggests that the wto warrants strong support while a more cautious view of ptas seems appropriate

survey measures of expected u s inflation of real interest rates and cash flows for decisions concerning investment expenditures international capital flows and exchange rate movements hinge in large part on expected real yield differentials across countries the federal reserve needs reliable measures of expected inflation to formulate and gauge the thrust of monetary policy in fact inflation expectations have become more important to the fed given the diminished stability of the link between the monetary aggregates and gdp expenditures since the early 1980s and the greater role which has been thrust upon expected real short term interest rates in the implementation of federal reserve policy the issue of rationality of inflation expectations that is the extent to which agents form expectations without making systematic mistakes in their beliefs about what inflation will be is important if inflation expectations are formed rationally labor and financial markets will strongly tend to neutralize the potential redistributive effects of inflation over time financial capital will flow efficiently within and across national borders moreover some of the stronger claims of new classical macroeconomics like the claim that only unexpected monetary policy actions will

international corporate tax avoidance a review of the channels magnitudes and blind spots this paper reviews the rapidly growing empirical literature on international tax avoidance by multinational corporations it surveys evidence on main channels of corporate tax avoidance including transfer mispricing international debt shifting treaty shopping tax deferral and corporate inversions moreover it performs a meta analysis of the extensive literature that estimates the overall size of profit shifting we find that the literature suggests that for the most recent year a 1 percentage point lower corporate tax rate compared to other countries will expand before tax income by 1 5 percent an effect that is larger than reported as the consensus estimate in previous surveys and tends to be increasing over time the literature on tax avoidance still has several unresolved puzzles and blind spots that require further research

the impact of trade liberalisation on exports imports and the balance of payments of developing countries this paper uses panel data and times series cross section analysis to estimate the effect of trade liberalisation on export growth import growth the balance of trade and the balance of payments for a sample of 22 developing countries that have adopted trade liberalisation policies since the mid 1970s we find that liberalisation stimulated export growth but raised import growth by more leading to a worsening of the balance of trade and payments to the extent that this has constrained the growth of output and living standards the findings have important implications for the sequencing and degree of liberalisation

peeling away the layers impacts of durable tariff elimination abstract we demonstrate that durable mfn tariff elimination affects trade patterns through several layers and magnitudes of effects are sizable the wto information technology agreement s ita unique setting allows us to overcome the challenges associated with identifying effects of non discriminatory trade policies due to two reasons i ita constitutes a quasi natural experiment of several passive signatories joining the agreement as an unavoidable part of pursuing a larger policy objective and ii ita s partial coverage of the it sector provides a natural control group for identification based on cross product variation our analysis finds novel nonlinear impacts of tariff liberalization complete tariff elimination results in large additional trade gains over and above tariff reductions especially for intermediate goods the commitment to durable tariff elimination through wto bindings adds another two layers boosting both imports and exports more than equivalent unilateral reforms this commitment spurned development of a downstream it export sector in passive signatories

forecasting efficiency concepts and applications this article introduces the concept of forecast efficiency in which the forecast contains all information available at the time of the forecast empirical tests investigate weak efficiency where the information set is all past forecasts and where all forecast revisions and errors should be uncorrelated with past forecast revisions tests of macroeconomic energy consumption and oil price forecasts find a significant autocorrelation of forecast revisions with fifty of fifty one tests showing positive correlation of forecast revisions as opposed to zero correlation consistent with forecast efficiency copyright 1987 by mit press

the price elasticity of electricity demand in south australia abstract in this paper the price elasticity of electricity demand representing the sensitivity of customer demand to the price of electricity has been estimated for south australia we first undertake a review of the scholarly literature regarding electricity price elasticity for different regions and systems then we perform an empirical evaluation of the historic south australian price elasticity focussing on the relationship between price and demand quantiles at each half hour of the day this work attempts to determine whether there is any variation in price sensitivity with the time of day or quantile and to estimate the form of any relationships that might exist in south australia

are regional trading arrangements trade creating an application of extreme bounds analysis in this study we use extreme bounds analysis to test the robustness of the hypothesis that regional trading arrangements rtas are trade creating extreme bounds analysis provides a more rigorous test of specification uncertainty than traditional econometric theory by incorporating prior information and using a systematic approach to testing the fragility of coefficient estimates the results show that the trade creation effect of most rtas is fragile using a least squares estimator where all weight is attached to the sampling distribution eight or more of the twelve rtas considered are found to be trade creating when the relative weight in the estimation is shifted from the sampling to the prior distribution the number of rtas that are trade creating falls to six at the 95 percent likelihood ellipsoid moreover when we specify that not all rtas are trade creating four rtas increase trade at the 95 percent likelihood ellipsoid at the extreme bounds when all weight is attached to the prior distribution none of the rtas are found to be trade creating as a result we conclude that the pervasive trade creation effect found in the literature reflects not the information content of the data but rather the unacknowledged beliefs of the researchers

do south south trade agreements increase trade commodity level evidence from comesa south south trade agreements are proliferating yet the impact of these agreements is largely unknown as existing north north and north south micro level studies are likely to yield misleading predictions for south south trade agreements this paper estimates the impact of comesa on uganda s imports between 1994 and 2003 detailed import and tariff data at the 6 digit harmonized system level are used for more than 1 000 commodities based on a difference in difference estimation strategy the paper finds that in contrast to evidence from aggregate statistics comesa s preferential tariff liberalization has not considerably increased uganda s trade with member countries on average across sectors the effect however is heterogeneous across sectors finally the paper finds no evidence of trade diversion effects resultats au niveau des biens pour le comesa les accords commerciaux sud sud proliferent or l impact de ces accords reste largement inconnu car les micro etudes des accords nord nord et nord sud sont susceptibles de mener a des previsions trompeuses quand il s agit d accords sud sud ce texte evalue l impact de comesa sur les importations de l ouganda entre 1994 et 2003 on utilise des donnees detaillees sur les tarifs et les importations au niveau des codes a six chiffres pour plus de 1000 biens a l aide d un modele d ecart dans les differences on decouvre que contrairement a ce que suggerent les statistiques agregees la liberalisation des tarifs preferentiels de comesa n a pas accru considerablement le commerce avec les pays membres en moyenne dans tous les secteurs l effet est different selon les secteurs de plus il appert qu il n y a pas eu diversion du commerce

trade deflection and trade depression this is the first paper to empirically examine whether a country s use of an import restricting trade policy distorts a foreign country s exports to third markets we first develop a theoretical model of worldwide trade in which the imposition of antidumping and safeguard taris or trade remedies by one country causes significant distortions in world trade flows we then empirically test this model by investigating the eect of the united states use of such import restrictions on japanese exports of roughly 4800 products into 37 countries between 1992 and 2001 our estimation yields evidence that us restrictions both deflect and depress japanese export flows to third countries imposition of a us antidumping measure against japan deflects trade as the average antidumping duty on japanese exports leads to a 5 7 increase in japanese exports of the same product to the average third country market the imposition of a us antidumping measure against a third country depresses trade as the average us duty imposed on a third country leads to a 5 19 decrease in japanese exports of that same product to the average third country s market we also document the substantial variation in trade deflection and trade depression across dierent importing countries and exported products

an alternative welfare decomposition for customs unions the authors present a means of evaluating the effects of customs union formation by a decomposition of the overall welfare effect into two components the consequences of induced changes in domestic prices and the effects on income of adjustments in tariff rates and endogenous changes in the pattern and volume of trade a virtue of the proposed decomposition is that it is path independent providing unambiguous results for analyses of both marginal and discrete changes in tariff rates this property means that the decomposition may be numerically implemented to provide better insight into the welfare effects of economic integration

the asymmetric effects of reversible tariff changes under the united states gsp in a partial equilibrium textbook model of competitive international trade the volume and net value of imports always vary inversely with the tariff rate this result depends on assumptions that the tariff changes are substantial exogenous permanent and applied on a most favorednation mfn basis empirical applications of this theory however encounter different conditions generalequilibrium effects such as changes in prices exchange rates and income tend to be offsetting imperfect competition can make the incidence of the tariff indeterminate many tariff changes are small endogenous temporary and or discriminatory to illustrate how these differences in tariffs can alter their observed relation to imports we offer the following examples a tokyo round cuts in u s tariffs were staged generally over eight years and averaged only 0 3 percent per annum 6 as compared to 6 4 percent average annual changes in american import prices over the same 1980 87 period 18 if search and recontracting costs caused buyers to ignore relatively small price variations then many observed tariff changes would produce negligible effects b governments tend to lower tariffs when imports are low enough to obviate political problems and they raise them as a response to import surges observers who ignore this endogeneity might conclude that imports are positively related to tariff rates c while many tariff concessions are bound under the gatt some duties are temporarily altered to provide import relief for domestic producers or preferential access for certain trade partners importers may not respond if the temporary benefits of doing so are exceeded by the costs of finding substitutes d the importers response to a tariff change will also differ between cases where some or all imports of a given product are affected a discriminatory tariff change might shift the shares of suppliers while leaving total imports virtually unaltered empirical studies seldom test the relation between imports and tariffs directly time series estimates of import demand equations usually subsume the tariff in a gross price variable

time of use pricing in electricity markets under different market structures in this paper we propose variational inequality models for electricity markets with time of use tou pricing demand response is dynamic in the model through a dependence on the lagged demand different market structures are examined within this context with an illustrative example the welfare gains losses are analyzed after an implementation of tou pricing scheme over the single pricing scheme it is intended that the proposed models would be useful 1 for regulatory bodies in jurisdictions to assess market power 2 to forecast future tou prices and 3 to examine welfare changes in electricity markets that change to tou pricing from single pricing

proliferating regional trade arrangements why and whither this paper investigates why regional trade arrangements rtas are proliferating extensively and how the effects of multiple rtas by interacting with each other evolve over time our empirical analysis based on an extended gravity model utilising a large panel dataset of 175 countries from 1948 to 1999 shows that rtas on average increase global trade by raising intra bloc trade without damaging extra bloc trade the net trade effects however heavily depend on the types of rta strategic evolution over time which we categorise as expansionary rtas duplicate rtas or overlapping rtas we find that countries excluded from an rta can benefit more from duplicating a separate rta than from joining an existing rta this result explains why the number of bilateral trade blocs rather than the membership size of existing rtas is currently exploding we also find that the net trade creating effects of rtas are substantially lower for countries participating in overlapping rtas this result suggests that it is less likely that the currently proliferating rtas will completely merge and lead the world economy to global free trade our empirical results are robust to controlling for the characteristics of countries that may influence the impact of rtas

factoring the elasticity of demand in electricity prices as electricity markets are liberalized consumers become exposed to more volatile electricity prices and may decide to modify the profile of their demand to reduce their electricity costs this paper analyzes the effect that the market structure can have on the elasticity of the demand for electricity it then describes how the consumers behavior can be modeled using a matrix of self and cross elasticities it is shown how these elasticities can be taken into consideration when scheduling generation and setting the price of electricity in a pool based electricity market these concepts are illustrated using a 26 generator system

cointegration error correction mechanism and trade liberalization the case of the spanish imports of manufactures this paper discusses the way that the effects of a tariff cut process on trade flows should be analysed when the variables are nonstationary using cointegration techniques and the error correction mechanism it is possible to establish the different types of structural break that might appear in the behaviour of a trade flow as a consequence of the trade liberalization process both in the short and in the long run in order to illustrate the results the evolution of the spanish imports of manufacturers after spain s entry into the european community is analysed

prospects of trade liberalization between the developed and the developing countries abstract this paper analyzes the theoretical and policy aspects of various possible approaches multilateral preferential and others toward new initiatives for liberalizing trade relations between the developed and the developing countries the increasing differentiation between the newly industrializing countries nics and the less developed countries ldcs suggests that a multidimensional framework allowing flexibility in dealing with different subsets within the developing countries would be more relevant the paper analyzes the probable outcomes and constraints of the various trade liberalizing options with regard to their effects on trade flows welfare and terms of trade

welfare and integration this article argues that the terms of trade and volume of trade taxonomy from the theory of tariffs constitutes an attractive alternative to viner s trade diversion and creation effects for the analysis of preferential trading arrangements in applications of the alternative approach the article establishes that results by lipsey and riezman on large versus small preunion trade flows for choice of partners are not contradictory and that under some conditions a small country s optimal strategy is to seek membership of multiple free trade areas

optimal opt in residential time of use contract based on principal agent theory installation of smart meters is increasing world wide opening the possibility to implement time of use tou tariffs to moderate peak loads this study is focused on the design of an optimal opt in residential tou tariff residential consumers are assumed to act in their private interests and maximize utility in response to tariffs the regulated utility has a broader interest in maximizing societal welfare however the regulated utility cannot impose household behavior and cannot directly observe household type instead the regulated utility must offer contract options including both a tou tariff and current pricing to allow households to self select the plan best suited to their interests this paper proposes a simple flexible household utility function that can be calibrated with minimal data to describe diverse household behaviors and reveal household responses to different prices an optimal pricing model is designed for the regulated utility taking account of asymmetric information and potential household opportunistic behavior using economic constructs from principal agent theory the pricing model ensures participation among households most aligned with the regulated utility s desire the pricing model can also be extended for competitive markets a case study is performed to demonstrate the benefit the optional tou tariff can realize

how effective are trade barriers an empirical analysis of trade reduction diversion and compression we analyze the effects of trade barriers using highly disaggregated data the level of disaggregation allows us to separate the effects of tariffs and nontariff barriers ntbs into reduction dive

third country effects of regional trade agreements does regionalism negatively impact non members to answer this question we examine the effect of regional trade agreements rtas on imports from non members and the tariffs that they face using data from six rtas in latin america and europe we do not find evidence that implementation of the regional agreements is associated with trade diversion from third countries to regional members using detailed industry data on preference margins and most favoured nation mfn tariffs for three trade agreements in latin america over 12 years we find that greater preference margins do not significantly reduce imports from third countries we also look at the effect of preferences on external tariffs we find evidence that preferential tariff reduction tends to precede the reduction of external mfn tariffs in a given sector offering evidence of tariff complementarity overall the results suggest that regionalism does not significantly harm non members

gstp tariff reduction and its effects on south south trade in manufactures using a gravity model with import tariffs on manufactures as an explanatory variable both at the import and at the export side the impact of tariffs on trade in manufactures is analyzed for a sample of 39 less developed country ldc importers the consequences of an agreement on a global system of trade preferences gstp for manufactures are estimated by lowering these tariffs for intra ldc trade by 20 and 50 alternatively the short term effects are found to be relatively modest and the long term effects considerably larger trade diversion from developed country dc to ldc suppliers has only limited impact

determinants of the major industrialized countries exports to developing countries abstract the analysis of the market position of six major industrialized countries in developing countries starts by describing the similarity of their export patterns by commodity groups and countries of destination which may be taken as an indicator of the degree of competition considering both aspects together west germany s exports display the greatest similarity with italian and british supplies the export market shares are then explained in a two stage approach first they are broken down into a commodity and a country component by means of a linear decomposition procedure second multiple regression is applied considering the commodity structure of demand geographical distance political historical linkages direct investment and development aid as explanatory variables the results show that for west germany japan and the united states the export market shares are mainly dependent on economic factors such as demand structure and transport costs due to geographical distance the french and british shares however are primarily determined by historical links and to a lesser extent by demand structure geographical distance plays no role at all italy tends to fall somewhere between the two groups

the relative inefficiency of quotas the cheese case the nonequivalence of tariffs and quotas under a wide variety of circumstances is well established in economic theory this study considers heterogeneity as a source of nonequivalence and demonstrates its practical importance where restriction is inevitable the bias of economists in favor of price instruments is not thoroughly grounded this study should help provide a foundation the point of departure from the equivalence model is differentiation of products

bilateral trade flows and economic integration in latin america and the caribbean abstract a gravity equation is used to analyze intra latin american and caribbean trade which is shown to depend mainly on the exporters gnp and distance importers gnp and exporter government policies are also relevant variables richer countries import more natural resource based products than manufactures from poorer ones thus larger richer countries enjoy large trade surpluses particularly in manufactures integration systems have had mixed results the central american common market and caricom have contributed substantially to manufacturing trade lafta has achieved moderate results while the andean group s impact has been poor

how sensitive are latin american exports to chinese competition in the u s market this paper estimates the elasticity of substitution of u s imports using detailed trade data over the 1990 2003 period the authors use a two stage least squares framework in order to identify the elasticity parameter of interest the authors use the elasticity estimates to assess the extent to which latin american and chinese goods compete in the u s market by providing forecasts of how alternative policy scenarios may affect exports to the united states the analysis considers the following scenarios i currency revaluation in china ii elimination of u s tariffs on latin american exports under a hemispheric free trade agreement and iii the elimination of quotas on apparel and textile exports under the multi fiber agreement the findings show that a 20 percent appreciation of the renminbi reduces chinese exports to the united states by a fifth although since other regions increase sales to that market 0 5 percent for latin america u s imports decline by only 1 7 percent hemispheric free trade would increase latin america s exports to the united states by around 3 percent the removal of the quotas would lead to a sharp increase in chinese sales to the united states 40 percent but latin america would see its share of the u s market decline by around 2 percent 2 5 percentage points china s gains would come mainly at the expense of other regions of the world

trade preferences to small developing countries and the welfare costs of lost multilateral liberalization the proliferation of preferential trade liberalization over the past 20 years has raised the question of whether it slows down multilateral trade liberalization recent theoretical and empirical evidence indicates this is the case even for unilateral preferences that industrial countries provide to small and poor countries but there is no estimate of the resulting welfare costs to avoid this stumbling block effect the authors suggest replacing unilateral preferences by a fixed import subsidy they argue that this scheme would reduce the drag of preferences on multilateral liberalization and generate a pareto improvement more important the authors provide the first estimates of the welfare cost of preferential liberalization as a stumbling block to multilateral liberalization by combining recent estimates of the stumbling block effect of preferences with data for 170 countries and over 5 000 products they calculate the welfare effects of the united states european union and japan switching from unilateral preferences to the developing countries to the import subsidy scheme even in a model with no dynamic gains to trade the authors find that the switch produces an annual net welfare gain for the 170 countries 4 354 million and for each group the united states european union and japan 2 934 million the developing countries 520 million and the rest of the world 900 million

trade in services and regional trade agreements do negotiations on services have to be specific trade in services has been on a substantial positive trend since the last decades and the number of regional trade agreements rta in force has increased regularly overtime however negotiations on services remain hesitant even at the bilateral level to evaluate the impact of rtas on trade in services a general classi cation as balassa s classi cation is not exactly appropriate to go through the 211 rtas noti ed to the wto permits a data analysis and then to sort rtas according to the own level of liberalization in services of every agreement i estimate a gravity equation using panel data covering the period 1999 2007 adding time varying dummies country and time

understanding international prices customers as capital the article develops a new theory of pricing to market driven by dynamic frictions of building market shares our key innovation is a capital theoretic model of marketing in which relations with customers are valuable we discipline the introduced friction using data on differences between short run and long run price elasticity of international trade flows we show that the model accounts for several pricing puzzles of international macroeconomics jel e13 f14 f31 f41 f44 m31

trade benefits under the eec generalized system of preferences the purpose of the paper is to test for the existence of a statistically significant effect of the eec generalized system of preferences on actual trade flows between developing countries and the eec using a gravity type model we estimate the gross trade creation effect of the eec generalized system of preferences on the eec imports from 10 major developing countries estimation on a yearly basis for the period 1967 1978 indicates the presence of a statistically significant effect it would appear that gross trade creation amounted to about s2 billion for these 10 countries in 1978 in addition to these calculations the paper reviews the eec generalized system of preferences in detail and offers comments on its future impact on exports from developing countries

regionalism within multilateralism the wto trade policy review of canada the world trade organisation published a trade policy review of canada in 2003 in this paper we discuss the wto review and augment the discussion by presenting original data and reviewing the empirical literature the wto concludes that canada s trade regime is open and transparent but maintains barriers in a few important sectors we subject this claim to empirical scrutiny comparing canada s actual imports to a multilateral benchmark based on the gravity equation we show that canada imports about what should be expected given the size of its economy and its location in a second benchmarking exercise we show that canada s anti dumping initiations are in proportion to its imports and that canada s exports are targeted less by other countries anti dumping investigations than what might be expected based on canadian export levels like many other countries canada has pursued trade liberalisation through the world trade organisation while simultaneously signing multiple regional trade agreements our summary of the recent literature indicates that canada s regional trade agreements have generated more trade creation than trade diversion canada has also spurred imports from the least developed countries by unilaterally eliminating tariffs and quota barriers on 48 of the world s poorest countries in january 2003 we also discuss canadian progress in opening its agriculture and clothing industries overall we conclude that canada appears committed to advancing globalisation through multilateral trade liberalisation supplemented by unilateral and bilateral initiatives

the direct and relative effects of preferential market access abstract the proliferation of preferential trade agreements has resulted in a complex system of preferences in which market access conditions are often discriminatory in this paper we investigate how market access conditions have evolved between 2000 and 2009 and how this has affected international trade our results show that the proliferation of preferential access has increased bilateral trade not only due to lower tariffs but also because preferential access often resulted in higher preferential margins vis a vis foreign competitors the results also indicate that the evolution of the system of preferences has been disadvantageous for countries that did not actively engage in forming new trade agreements

the effects of trade preferences for developing countries at the 1964 and 1968 united nations conferences on trade and development the developing countries pressed for and the developed countries finally agreed to the granting of preferential tariff treatment on the formers manufactured exports such a discriminatory measure runs counter to the non discrimination or most favored nation mfn principle set out in the first article of the general agreement on tariffs and trade and a gatt waiver was necessary before the developed countries could introduce their individual schemes under the generalized system of preferences gsp since their introduction between 1971 and 1976 these schemes have aroused opposition not only from protectionist forces in the donor countries and from supporters of the non discrimination principle but also from economists arguing that the gsp yields little benefit to the developing countries who would do better to seek mfn tariff cuts on goods in whose production they possess a comparative advantage the developing countries have however been if anything more skeptical of mfn tariff cuts since the introduction of gsp because such cuts would erode the value of their preference margins the relative merits of gsp versus mfn tariff cuts from the developing countries perspective is partly an empirical matter which could be settled by estimates of the trade creating and trade diverting impact of gsp such estimates require values for gsp beneficiaries parameters about which our knowledge is limited in this paper i contend that the most influential estimates of gsp effects sidestep this requirement in a manner which guarantees the predominance of trade creation whereas consideration of plausible parameter values and of the design of actual gsp schemes suggests trade diversion to be more significant the standard partial equilibrium model with infinitely elastic supply figure 1 has proven popular for estimating the effect of non preferential tariff changes largely because of its meager data requirements it is however inappropriate for preferential tariff changes because all imports come from the same source and all or nothing diversion of nonbeneficiaries trade is predicted this difficulty can be circumvented while remaining within the

estimation of urban residential electricity demand in china using household survey data abstract this paper uses annual urban household survey data of sichuan province from 2007 to 2009 to estimate the income and price elasticities of residential electricity demand along with the effects of lifestyle related variables the empirical results show that in the urban area of sichuan province the residential electricity demand is price and income inelastic with price and income elasticities ranging from 0 35 to 0 50 and from 0 14 to 0 33 respectively such lifestyle related variables as demographic variables dwelling size and holdings of home appliances are also important determinants of residential electricity demand especially the latter these results are robust to a variety of sensitivity tests the research findings imply that urban residential electricity demand continues to increase with the growth of income the empirical results have important policy implications for the multistep electricity price which been adopted in some cities and is expected to be promoted nationwide through the installation of energy efficient home appliances

coupon incentive based demand response theory and case study this paper presents the formulation and critical assessment of a novel type of demand response dr program targeting retail customers such as small medium size commercial industrial and residential customers who are equipped with smart meters yet still face a flat rate enabled by pervasive mobile communication capabilities and smart grid technologies load serving entities lses could offer retail customers coupon incentives via near real time information networks to induce demand response for a future period of time in anticipation of intermittent generation ramping and or price spikes this scheme is referred to as coupon incentive based demand response cidr in contrast to the real time pricing or peak load pricing dr programs cidr continues to offer a flat rate to retail customers and also provides them with voluntary incentives to induce demand response theoretical analysis shows the benefits of the proposed scheme in terms of social welfare consumer surplus lse profit the robustness of the retail electricity rate and readiness for implementation the pros and cons are discussed in comparison with existing dr programs numerical illustration is performed based on realistic supply and demand data obtained from the electric reliability council of texas ercot

forecasting the ecb s main refinancing rate a field experiment abstract when no appropriate markets to derive expectations on economic variables are available surveying methods are often employed however surveys suffer from the problem of how to aggregate individual expectations in a reasonable manner we show at the example of a market on the ecb s main refinancing rate that experimental markets aggregate information quite efficiently and thus are a useful tool in this respect

growth by destination the role of trade in africa s recent growth episode summary over the period 1990 2009 africa has experienced a distinct and favorable reversal in its growth fortunes in stark contrast to its performance in the preceding decades leading to a variety of hypotheses seeking to explain the phenomenon this paper presents both cross country and panel data evidence on the causal factors driving the recent turnaround in africa s growth and takes the unique approach of disaggregating the separate growth impacts of africa s bilateral trade with china europe and america the empirical analysis presented in this paper suggests that the primary and most robust causal factors driving africa s recent growth turnaround are private sector and foreign direct investment although empirical evidence of the role of bilateral trade openness in africa s recent growth emerges within a fixed effect estimation setting these results are not as robust when endogeneity and other issues are fully accounted for among the three major bilateral partners africa s bilateral trade with china has been a relatively important factor spurring growth on the continent and especially so in resource rich oil producing and non landlocked countries the econometric results are not as supportive of growth inducing effects of foreign aid these findings emerge after applying a variety of panel data specifications to the data including the recent fixed effects filtered fef estimator introduced by pesaran and zhou 2014 and the dynamic panel generalized method of moments gmm estimator which allows for endogeneity between trade and growth

trade and welfare effects of the european schemes of the generalized system of preferences through the last two rounds of multilateral tariff negotiations the kennedy round and the tokyo round discussions have been dominated by the interests of the three major trading blocs the united states the european economic community eec and japan all three groups have sought to exempt certain domestic industries from the negotiations the eec and japan have vigorously defended their agricultural sectors while the united states and other industrialized countries have protected the domestic textile and clothing industries consequently the products of greatest immediate interest to the less developed countries ldcs have not been the object of significant reductions in tariffs or nontariff barriers ntbs however the ldcs have not been excluded completely most of the industrialized countries have substituted a scheme of sub most

the nafta preference and us mexico trade aggregate level analysis this paper focuses on the us tariff preference afforded to mexico relative to non nafta trading partners and evaluates the trade effects of nafta in a manner consistent with the idea behind a preferential trading agreement the estimation technique exploits the time varying dimension of the tariff preference over 1989 to 2001 this is important because the tariff preference for mexico into the united states market existed prior to nafta further the nafta preference was phased in over time we find that a higher us tariff preference for mexico corresponds to increased us import demand for mexican goods and that a higher mexican tariff preference for the united states corresponds to increased mexican demand for us exports interestingly import demand was more responsive to changes in the tariff preference once nafta was in place than it was on average

has the european community gsp increased ldc exports hypothesized differences in mean changes in shares of european community ec import markets over the period 1976 84 are tested for each of 36 less developed countries means are calculated for cases in which mfn tariffs are re established and for cases in which duty free treatment is restored under the ec generalized system of preferences they are compared with means for cases in which tariffs remained constant we attempt to control for both product specific and cyclical influences on imports in contrast to some previous results our findings suggest that denial restoration of preferential treatment i e a tariff increase decrease has its expected negative positive effect

trade diversion under selective preferential market access through its diverse trade preference schemes the european union provides different groups of developing countries with different degrees of market access this paper is the first to demonstrate empirically that such staggered market access induces sizable trade diversion to the detriment of relatively less preferred beneficiary countries in particular preferences granted to african caribbean and pacific economies are shown to impair the export performance of seven developing countries whose products only qualify for basic preferences under the generalized system of preferences exports to the european union decline by about 30 percent if the african caribbean and pacific tariff falls by 10 percentage points in terms of forgone trade volume losses for these relatively disadvantaged countries amount on average to 9 percent of their total trade with the european union depending on the country and its main exports these intra developing country distortions are driven by highly substitutable often labor intensive commodities

trade policy under the gatt wto empirical evidence of the equal treatment rule a fundamental difference between multilateral trade agreements like the gatt and wto and a preferential agreement is the multilateral agreements inclusion of a most favoured nation principle though mfn requires that members implement policies that provide equal treatment to all gatt wto countries how far do members actually follow the mfn principle when so required we empirically investigate a sample of gatt wto trade disputes and the effect of successful dispute settlement negotiations on the disputed product trade of third country exporters to the defendant country we document evidence of trade liberalization consistent with defendant countries successfully applying the equal treatment rule jel classification f13 politique commerciale sous le regime gatt omc resultats empiriques de la regle du traitement equivalent une difference fondamentale entre les accords commerciaux multilateraux comme le gatt ou l omc et un accord preferentiel est que dans le premier cas on fait appel au principe de la nation la plus favorisee meme si ce principe requiert que les membres mettent en place des politiques qui assurent un traitement equivalent a tous les pays de l accord gatt omc reste a savoir jusqu a quel point les membres se soumettent a ce principe quand c est requis ce memoire etudie la question en faisant enquete sur un echantillon de disputes commerciales autour d accords de type gatt omc et sur l effet du succes des negociations dans la resolution de conflit sur le commerce du produit au caeur de la dispute en provenance de pays tiers exportant vers le pays qui se defend on montre que les resultats de la liberalisation du commerce sont consistants avec l application de la regle du traitement equivalent par les pays qui se defendent

level of development and the us generalised system of preferences malaysia and mexico in this article we examine the effects of the united states generalised system of preferences gsp on the exports of mexico and malaysia mexico and malaysia were selected because we hypothesised that differences in industrialisation between them would highlight possible problems connected with the competitive need provisions of the us gsp programme our findings are generally consistent with other gsp studies that covered different countries commodities and time periods and employed various empirical models however our results for mexico do not lend support to the recently advanced proposition that high income ldcs are the primary beneficiaries of the us gsp

trade creation and trade diversion in the canada united states free trade agreement in this paper the changes in trade patterns introduced by the canada united states free trade agreement are examined variation in the extent of tariff liberalization under the agreement is used to identify the impact of tariff liberalization on the growth of trade both with member countries and non member countries data at the commodity level are used and the results indicate that the canada united states free trade agreement had substantial trade creation effects with little evidence of trade diversion jel classification f13 f14

what does the term structure tell us about future inflation abstract this empirical analysis indicates that for maturities of six months or less the term structure of nominal interest rates provides almost no information about the future path of inflation but does provide information about the term structure of real interest rates however as maturities lengthen to nine and twelve months the nominal term structure begins to contain information about future inflation but ceases to provide information about the real term structure these results are explained by differences in the relative variability of expected future inflation changes and real term structure slopes at different points in the term structure

evaluating the impact of nonreciprocal trade preferences using gravity models this article presents new evidence on the impact of nonreciprocal preferential trade policies nrptps granted by developed countries to exports from developing countries over the period 1995 to 2003 the analysis has been carried out by using three levels of data aggregation it accounts for unobservable heterogeneity endogeneity of the preferential treatment and potential selection bias we find a positive and significant impact of nrptps when considering total exports and total agricultural exports however at 2 digit agricultural level the results are heterogeneous

a north american free trade agreement analytical issues and a computational assessment abstractthe following sections are included introductionissues in analyzing the economic impact of the naftathe computational modelcomputational resultsconclusionsstudy questionsreferencessuggested further reading this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

trade liberalization comparative advantage and scale economies stock market evidence from canada abstract the canada united states free trade agreement fta provides an excellent opportunity to analyze the impact of a comprehensive trade liberalization in this paper a stock market event study is employed to capture investors expectations about the consequences of this agreement for manufacturing firms in canada the primary question addressed is whether abnormal stock market returns corresponding to news about the fta are consistent with hypotheses based on comparative advantage and economies of scale the results indicate that both comparative advantage and scale economies played a role in determining investors perceptions of the impact of the fta

a political economic model of u s bilateral trade a bstract interrelationships between economics and politics have long been recognized by scholars in the field of international relations this paper attempts to identify and quantify the factors aflecting bilateral trade flows between the united states and other countries by developing a gravity type model the model includes economic and political variables and is tested using data for sixty six u s trading partners results indicate that pure economic variables which reflect market forces are not the only factors affecting u s bilateral trade semi cconomic and international political factors are also important

trade preferences for developing countries a survey of results empirical studies of the trade and development effects of the major preferential trading schemes between the industrialised countries and the developing countries are surveyed most studies find the agreements to be trade creating improving welfare for the donor though general equilibrium analysis indicates that terms of trade deterioration offsets efficiency gains there is some evidence that trade preferences stimulate ldc exports of preferred products but total exports are not significantly affected due to limited product coverage the existing literature does not provide evidence on the degree of infant industry protection or on economic diversification of the beneficiaries

estimation of japanese price elasticities of residential electricity demand 1990 2007 abstract this paper estimates elasticities of japanese residential price electricity from 1990 to 2007 the first difference generalized method of moment estimator is employed to avoid dynamic panel bias which is not considered in most previous studies the results show that while short run elasticities are similar to those in previous studies long run elasticities are significantly lower in our study we also find that the price elasticity of japanese residential electricity consumption is notably affected by income inequality and severe weather based on these results we provide some insights to tailor environmental taxation so as to effectively attain the kyoto protocol

gravity models a reformulation and an application to discriminatory trade arrangements gravity models are used to estimate trade flows from 162 countries into 11 major importing countries for 1976 counting the ec as one the main theories underlying gravity models are reviewed and a new gravity model is derived from a linear expenditure system a major innovation of this model is that both tariffs and dummy variables for discriminatory arrangements are incorporated price variables are also explicitly included in the model the tariff and the dummy variables are found to be statistically significant and this indicates that previous gravity model studies which used dummies to estimate the trade benefits of preferential tariffs may not have accurately estimated the effects of the preferences the price variables generally are also found to be statistically significant which casts doubt on the homogeneous goods assumption underlying the purchasing power parity hypothesis some significant differences in the estimates were found when separate equations were regressed for the eec and the us