Suchergebnisse

National governments dislike food price volatility to varying extents. When some of them use trade measures to insulate their domestic market from international food price fluctuations, that volatility is amplified. This in turn prompts more countries to follow suit. However, when both food-exporting and food-importing countries so respond, each group becomes less capable of preventing domestic price volatility. This paper examines empirically the extent of insulation in both groups of countries, and also in high-income versus developing countries. It also provides an estimate of the contribution of such government actions to international food price spikes. A multilateral agreement to limit such government responses would reduce the need for all countries to so intervene, and allow more-efficient generic social protection policies to deal with the most vulnerable cases. ; The author is grateful for financial support from the Australian Research Council, the World Bank, and Australia's Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation.

National governments dislike food price volatility to varying extents. When some of them use trade measures to insulate their domestic market from international food price fluctuations, that volatility is amplified. This in turn prompts more countries to follow suit. However, when both food-exporting and food-importing countries so respond, each group becomes less capable of preventing domestic price volatility. This paper examines empirically the extent of insulation in both groups of countries, and also in high-income versus developing countries. It also provides an estimate of the contribution of such government actions to international food price spikes. A multilateral agreement to limit such government responses would reduce the need for all countries to so intervene, and allow more-efficient generic social protection policies to deal with the most vulnerable cases. ; The author is grateful for financial support from the Australian Research Council, the World Bank, and Australia's Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation.

This article examines how trade shocks shape labour market imperfections that create market power in labour markets and prevent an efficient allocation of labour. I develop a framework for measuring such labor market distortions in monetary terms and document large degrees of those distortions in Germany's manufacturing sector. Import competition can only exert labor market disciplining effects when firms rather than workers have labour market power. Otherwise, export demand and import competition shocks tend to fortify existing distortions by amplifying labour market power structures. This diminishes the gains from trade compared to a model with perfectly competitive labour markets.

"Nontariff Measures and International Trade includes 20 chapters authored by John Beghin and co-authors over the last 20 years on the economics of quality-standard like nontariff measures in the context of international trade. This book provides a coherent and comprehensive treatment of these nontariff measures, from their measurement to their effects on trade and welfare. In Part I, the authors use different perspectives to make the case that, unlike tariffs, quality-standard like nontariff measures are complex to measure and analyze and do not easily lead to general policy prescriptions. Then, Part II contains contributions on measurements of welfare and trade effects of nontariff measures, accounting for potential market imperfections. Part III presents chapters on the potential protectionism of nontariff measures when they are used to favor some economic agents over society. The last part presents cases studies of nontariff measures in different industries, markets, and countries."--Publisher's website