Synopsis
Proposing new theoretically sound indexes for measuring trade restrictiveness, with empirical results that show their application.
A country's stance on international trade is an important component of its economic welfare. Yet relatively little theoretical attention has been paid to developing accurate methods to assess trade policies, leaving practitioners and policy makers with ad hoc solutions that lack theoretical foundation. In this book, James Anderson and Peter Neary present a new approach to gauging trade restrictiveness. Extending the standard theory of index numbers that apply to prices, output, or productivity, Anderson and Neary develop index numbers that apply directly to policy variables. Their theoretical work builds on, and extends, the standard theory of policy reform in open economics; their empirical findings illustrate how the new indexes can be applied and show the resulting difference in the assessment of trade restrictiveness. Thus their book will be of interest to both theorists and practitioners.
After giving a nontechnical introduction to the topic, which includes a discussion of the theoretical and practical failings of other methods of measurement, Anderson and Neary propose two new indexes, the welfare-equivalent uniform tariff and the import-volume-equivalent uniform tariff, and present the theoretical foundation for these methods. The empirical work that follows applies the new approach to a range of issues, including the trade restrictiveness of domestic distortions and the use of a computable general equilibrium model to calculate the proposed measures of trade restrictiveness.
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About the Author
James E. Anderson is Neenan Professor of Economics at Boston College.
Review
Anderson and Neary have produced a work of originality and importance, tackling the difficult problem of measuring the restrictiveness of trade arising from multiple instruments. It should wind up on the reading lists of all serious courses on commercial policy.
―Jagdish Bhagwati, University Professor, Economics and Law, Columbia UniversityAnderson and Neary's theoretical analysis and empirical applications are invaluable for serious students of trade policy. We can expect their results to lay the foundation for the cross-country measurement of the distorting effects of tariffs and quotas.
―Robert Feenstra, Professor, Department of Economics, University of California, DavisIn this volume, two of the finest minds in international trade theory bring together in a single place and within a coherent framework the many contributions they have made in recent years to the theory of measuring trade restrictiveness, and they also move that discussion in new directions. This will be an essential resource for both theoretical and empirical work on trade policy.
―Alan V. Deardorff, Department of Economics, University of MichiganAnderson and Neary have succeeded in making the measurement of trade-policy restrictiveness accessible and clear to a wide audience. In tackling this complex issue, they provide the technical apparatus and the intuition necessary to make both theory and applications comprehensible. This book will be an important reference for academics and trade-policy practitioners alike.
―Robert W. Staiger, Professor of Economics, University of Wisconsin―Madison"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
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Measuring the Restrictiveness of International Trade Policy
Published by
MIT Press, 2005
ISBN 10: 0262012200
ISBN 13: 9780262012201
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Hardcover
First Edition
Seller: killarneybooks, Inagh, CLARE, Ireland
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Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Good. 1st Edition. Cloth hardcover, xvii + 320 pages, NOT ex-library. Gentle handling wear, some very minor sparse residue of erased pencil marks. Book is clean and bright, untanned, with unmarked text, free of inscriptions and stamps, firmly bound. Good, little-worn dust jacket shows with a couple of edge-nicks and impression marks/indentations. -- This book provides a rigorous theoretical foundation and a practical framework for quantifying the overall restrictiveness of a country's trade policy, moving beyond the flawed, a-theoretical measures commonly used in empirical research. The central contribution is the development of theoretically consistent index numbers that aggregate a complex array of tariffs, quotas, and other barriers into a single, meaningful metric. The authors formulate two primary indexes based on different economic benchmarks: the Trade Restrictiveness Index (TRI), which is the uniform tariff equivalent that would deliver the same level of national welfare (real income) as the actual differentiated trade barriers, and the Mercantilist Trade Restrictiveness Index (MTRI), which is the uniform tariff equivalent that would generate the same total import volume. The analysis is built upon sophisticated dual techniques within a general equilibrium structure, systematically exploring the indexes' properties under various assumptions, including imperfect competition and the presence of non-tariff barriers. The second half of the book is dedicated to demonstrating the practical implementation of these concepts. It presents empirical applications, including calculations of the TRI and MTRI for numerous countries, and examines their use within Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) models. A key finding is the significant divergence, and at times opposite sign, between these theoretically sound indexes and conventional measures like the trade-weighted average tariff, fundamentally challenging the validity of conclusions drawn from using the latter. Seller Inventory # 011999
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