Three essays on strategic trade policies: International competition in quality, intellectual property rights protection and north-south trade.

详细信息   

• 作者：Liao ; Pei-Cheng.
• 学历：Doctor
• 年：2002
• 导师：Wong, Kar-yiu
• 毕业院校：University of Washington
• 专业：Economics, General.;Economics, Theory.
• ISBN：0493920129
• CBH：3072110
• Country：USA
• 语种：English
• FileSize：4761856
• Pages：174

文摘

The first essay, entitled “Minimum Quality Standard and International Rivalry in Quality and Price,” examines the use of minimum quality standard (MQS) for an open economy. In the presence of an international duopoly, the country with inferior technology in quality improvement can use such policy in a strategic way to shift the profit of the advanced firm towards its own firm, thereby improving its own national welfare. Thus, MQS is similar to other strategic trade policies such as export subsidies. MQS may be detrimental to its trading partner, and thus will likely draw retaliation. Under the present WTO dispute settlement procedure, a country may make the first move to impose a MQS and wait for the other country to react after complaining to the WTO. In such case, the first country will want to impose a higher MQS in order to induce a lower retaliatory tariff imposed by the other country.;The second essay, entitled “R&D Subsidy Policy, Intellectual Property Rights Protection, and North-South Trade,” analyzes the role of an R&D subsidy when Northern R&D investment benefits the South through spillovers due to loose Southern intellectual property rights (IPR) protection. If the Northern and Southern governments can negotiate a bilateral agreement such that the Southern government increases IPR protection and the Northern government increases the R&D subsidy, both countries could be better off. We suggest that R&D subsidies can be used by developed countries as a quid pro quo for increasing IPR protection in developing countries.;The third essay, entitled “A Game-Theoretic Analysis of Export Subsidies and Import Tariffs,” examines the effects of tariff regimes on the export subsidy policy in which two exporting countries choose export subsidies/taxes before the importing country chooses tariffs. In most cases, the noncooperative equilibrium shows that both exporting countries use export taxes (subsidies) under discriminatory (uniform) tariff regime. With identical marginal costs, the importing country prefers uniform tariff regime while the exporting countries prefer discriminatory tariff regime. Moreover, under incomplete information, the noncooperative equilibrium shows that both exporting countries use pooling policies to conceal the cost information of their firms.