Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

acceptedVersion

Publication Date

3-2007

Abstract

WTO rules prohibit “disguised protection” in the form of domestic policies. How then do governments cooperate over trade and domestic policies when none can verify whether a nation's domestic tax reduction is a protective measure or a reaction to a production externality? In this paper, each government privately observes whether a production externality associated with its import-competing good is high or low. This paper finds that in an optimal agreement, disguised protection with domestic policies is never used by governments with a high externality, and is never commonly realized. Moreover, in an optimal agreement, tariffs may be conditional on domestic policies.

Keywords

Trade agreement, Private information, Domestic policy, Disguised protection

Discipline

International Economics

Research Areas

Applied Microeconomics

Publication

Journal of International Economics

Volume

71

Issue

1

First Page

241

Last Page

259

ISSN

0022-1996

Identifier

10.1016/j.jinteco.2006.05.002

Publisher

Elsevier

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jinteco.2006.05.002

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