Remedies in the WTO: An economic perspective

The WTO dispute settlement system represents a major achievement of the Uruguay Round. By most accounts, this system has worked very well. In the ongoing dispute settlement understanding (DSU) review, WTO Members are considering proposals that might lead to further improvements in the functioning of the dispute settlement system. Many of these proposals concern different kinds of remedies that might be used in response to a violation. An evaluation of proposals for remedy reform requires a perspective as to the purpose of the WTO. In this essay, I describe and then apply the terms-of-trade theory of trade agreements. I argue that this theory offers a coherent interpretation of the purpose and design of the WTO. The theory also offers novel insights with respect to proposed reforms of the WTO remedy system

Signaling and entry deterrence: A multi-dimensional analysis

This paper considers a long-standing question in the field of Industrial Organization: Can an incumbent firm price and advertise so as to deter entry that otherwise would be profitable? For the most part, the first economists to consider this question give affirmative answers. Braithwaite (1928) and Robinson (1933) offer early informal remarks in support of the view that advertising has an entry-deterrence effect. Bain (1949) provides an early argument that an incumbent may deter entry by limit pricing (i.e., by pricing below the monopoly price), and Williamson (1963) later develops an analogous argument that an incumbent can deter entry by committing to a low price and a high advertising level. Important early empirical contributions by Bain (1956) and Comanor and Wilson (1967, 1974) offer inter-industry evidence that is broadly consistent with the hypothesis that advertising by established firms generates an entry barrier

Domestic Policies, National Sovereignty and International Economic Institutions

To what extent must nations cede control over their economic and social policies if global efficiency is to be achieved in an interdependent world? This question is at the center of the debate over the future role of GATT (and its successor, the WTO) in the realm of labor and environmental standards. Current GATT rules reflect the primacy of market access concerns in GATT practice, and this orientation is seen increasingly as unfriendly to labor and environmental causes. Fundamental changes to GATT are being considered as a result, changes that would expand the scope of GATT negotiations to include labor and environmental policies, and would lead to a significant loss of sovereignty for national governments. In this paper we establish that there is no need for the WTO to expand the scope of its negotiations in this way. We show instead that the market access focus of current GATT rules is well-equipped to handle the problems associated with choices over labor and environmental standards, and that with relatively modest changes that grant governments more sovereignty, not less, these rules can in principle deliver globally efficient outcomes.

Can the Doha Round be a Development Round? Setting a Place at the Table

A fundamental objective of the Doha Round of WTO negotiations is to improve the trading prospects of developing countries. The 2001 declaration from the WTO Ministerial Conference in Doha, Qatar, commits the member governments to negotiations aimed at substantial improvements in market access with a view to phasing out export subsidies, while embracing “special and differential treatment” for developing countries as an integral part of all elements of the negotiations. The main message of this paper comes in three parts. First, these stated aims are incompatible from the perspective of our economic analysis; thus, if these aims are pursued as stated, then we conclude that they are unlikely to deliver the meaningful trade gains for developing countries that the WTO membership seeks. Second, in attempting to integrate its developing country membership into the world trading system, the WTO may face a “latecomers” problem that, while occurring also in earlier rounds, is unprecedented in its scale in the Doha Round, and which could potentially account for the current impasse. And third, we argue that if the Round maintains its stated aims but moves away from the non-reciprocal special-and-differential treatment norm as the cornerstone of the approach to meeting developing country needs in the WTO, and if developing countries prepare, in markets where they are large, to come to the bargaining table and to negotiate reciprocally with each other and with developing nations, then it might be possible to break the impasse at Doha, to address the latecomers problem, and to deliver trade gains for developing countries.

Look How Little I’m Advertising!

This paper studies the role of advertising and prices as signals of quality in a purely static setting, where repeat purchases are suppressed altogether, but where advertising affects demand directly. We first show, under standard regularity assumptions, that the high-quality firm will distort its price upwards and its level of advertising downwards compared to the complete-information case. We then show, under relatively mild additional conditions, that the high-quality firm will choose a level of advertising below that of the low-quality firm, even if the high-quality firm advertises most under complete information. Hence, empirically, a high price and a modest advertising budget may well signal high quality.quality; signaling; pricing; advertising

Backward Stealing and Forward Manipulation in the WTO

Motivated by the structure of WTO negotiations, we analyze a bargaining environment in which negotiations proceed bilaterally and sequentially under the most-favored-nation (MFN) principle. We identify backward-stealing and forward-manipulation problems that arise when governments bargain under the MFN principle in a sequential fashion. We show that these problems impede governments from achieving the multilateral efficiency frontier unless further rules of negotiation are imposed. We identify the WTO nullification-or-impairment and renegotiation provisions and its reciprocity norm as rules that are capable of providing solutions to these problems. In this way, we suggest that WTO rules can facilitate the negotiation of efficient multilateral trade agreements in a world in which the addition of new and economically significant countries to the world trading system is an ongoing process.