Trade Agreements

This paper reviews the most significant recent developments in the theory of trade agreements. The paper offers an integrated approach to evaluating trade agreements, and uses the approach to present results on preferential and multilateral trade agreements. The paper identifies also several questions for further research.trade agreements, multilateralism, free trade, customs unions, free trade areas, preferential trade

Hubs and Spokes, and Free Trade in the Americas

This paper compares two possible formats for free trade in the Americas: a system of spokes surrounding a U.S. hub, and a free trade area. The paper identifies the sources of welfare change, and it argues that a country's attitude towards a system depends on whether the arrangement is a complement or a substitute trading club. The paper argues also that rent-seeking activities, and costs of administration and transportation, are likely to be higher in a hub-and-spoke system than in a free trade area.

Tariff Phase-Outs: Theory and Evidence from GATT and NAFTA

This paper considers tariff phase-outs in multilateral and preferential agreements. The paper finds that early GATT rounds primarily were over bindings of existing rates and that it was not until the 1962-67 Kennedy Round's 50% reduction in manufactured goods tariffs that time paths of tariff reductions became a substantive part of GATT agreements. Existing empirical work has demonstrated that U.S. industries with high initial tariffs tended to receive long periods for tariff adjustment or tended to be exempted from agreed reductions in both the Kennedy and Tokyo Rounds. This paper demonstrates that high U.S. tariffs and little intra-industry trade are associated with long NAFTA phase-out periods for U.S. imports from Mexico. Mexico's phase-outs are correlated, on the other hand, with those of the United States but not generally with Mexico's tariffs.

Monopoly and Trade Policy

This paper presents a general equilibrium technique for the problem of ranking policies of a nation that trades with a foreign monopoly firm by presenting a generalization of the offer curve. The paper demonstrates the existence of a partial welfare ranking between ad valorem rates and specific rates, and it shows that a minimum import requirement welfare dominates other quantitative policies. The paper proves that a recent policy, the voluntary import expansion, has strongly adverse consequences: when trading with a foreign monopoly firm a nation implementing such a policy will achieve only its autarky level of welfare.

Welfare and Customs Unions

This paper proposes that Viner's celebrated trade diversion and trade creation terminology for the customs union problem be abandoned. As the alternative is offered a welfare calculus based upon the terms-of-trade and volume-of-trade taxonomy from the theory of tariffs. The paper discusses, by application of this calculus, the two outstanding controversies in the theory of customs unions.

1,7,9,10-Tetrasubstituted PMIs Accessible through Decarboxylative Bromination: Synthesis, Characterization, Photophysical Studies, and Hydrogen Evolution Catalysis

In this work, we present a new synthetic strategy for fourfold-substituted perylene monoimides via tetrabrominated perylene monoanhydrides. X-ray diffraction analysis unveiled the intramolecular stacking orientation between the substituents and semicircular packing behavior. We observed the remarkable influence of the substituent on the longevity and nature of the excited state upon visible light excitation. In the presence of poly(dehydroalanine)-graft-poly(ethylene glycol) graft copolymers as solubilizing template, the chromophores are capable of sensitizing [Mo3S13]2− clusters in aqueous solution for stable visible light driven hydrogen evolution over three days. © 2020 The Authors. Chemistry - A European Journal published by Wiley-VCH Gmb

Valid population inference for information-based imaging: From the second-level t-test to prevalence inference

In multivariate pattern analysis of neuroimaging data, ‘second-level’ inference is often performed by entering classification accuracies into a t-test vs chance level across subjects. We argue that while the random-effects analysis implemented by the t-test does provide population inference if applied to activation differences, it fails to do so in the case of classification accuracy or other ‘information-like’ measures, because the true value of such measures can never be below chance level. This constraint changes the meaning of the population-level null hypothesis being tested, which becomes equivalent to the global null hypothesis that there is no effect in any subject in the population. Consequently, rejecting it only allows to infer that there are some subjects in which there is an information effect, but not that it generalizes, rendering it effectively equivalent to fixed-effects analysis. This statement is supported by theoretical arguments as well as simulations. We review possible alternative approaches to population inference for information-based imaging, converging on the idea that it should not target the mean, but the prevalence of the effect in the population. One method to do so, ‘permutation-based information prevalence inference using the minimum statistic’, is described in detail and applied to empirical data