Applied Trade Policy Modeling in 16 Countries

The following section is included:

• Contents

In the 26 years that I have worked as an international trade economist or consultant to the World Bank, I have worked in more than 25 developing countries. In general, this work has both led to trade policy advice to developing countries and research papers. In many cases, the government requests for assistance to the World Bank specified that the policy discussion should be informed by the construction of a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of their economy. In this first of two volumes reproducing many of the research papers from this work, I focus on 18 articles from the CGE based projects in 16 countries: Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Hungary, Poland, Turkey, Iran, Morocco, Tunisia, Chile, Brazil, Kenya, Tanzania, the European Union and the United States. All of these studies were part of World Bank financed projects in response to government requests, with the exception of the article on the United States (which was based on my work in the U.S. government)…

This paper quantifies the welfare effects and resource shifts that would occur if U.S. quantitative restrictions (QRs) in textiles, steel and autos were removed. Estimates are derived from a static ten-sector general equilibrium model of the U.S. economy. The welfare loss from the QRs is estimated at approximately U.S. $20 billion (1984 dollars) Due to the high rent transfer component of QRs (about 75%), the average across-the-board tariff equivalent of QRs (in terms of welfare costs) is estimated at about 20%, a rate which predates the early days of multilateral tariff reduction.

The following sections are included:

• Introduction
• Recent Policy Changes Affecting Hungarian Agriculture
• Basic Data and Overview of the Model
• Costs of Licensing of Imports and Export Subsidies
• Costs of a CAP Type System
• Conclusion
• References

Poland, like many developing countries, has required its exporters to surrender a share of their foreign exchange earnings to the government at an overvalued exchange rate. During the late 1980s, it progressively increased the share which exporters were allowed to retain (the retention ratio), but other distortions to the trade regime remained. A model developed here estimates the effects of these policies on welfare under different foreign exchange elasticities, export and import subsidies, official exchange rates, and policies on exporter retention of foreign exchange earnings. The retention ratios in effect in early 1989 were equivalent to a 51 percent tax on exports or an import tariff of 130 percent. As economic theory would suggest, maximum social benefit would derive from removal of the full range of distortions. Full retention of foreign exchange by exporters in the absence of other distortions would provide social benefits equivalent to 8 percent of gross domestic product. But the net effect of the other policies together is a bias toward tradables, so that a policy of somewhat less than full retention of foreign exchange is optimal in this second-best world.

Recent reforms in trade policy in Turkey have produced a foreign trade regime that exhibits very little antiexport bias on average. A quantitative, multisectoral general equilibrium model of the Turkish economy shows that piecemeal trade policy reform, based on first-best rationales that are appropriate for highly distorted economies, would not now be appropriate. Further tariff reductions must be coordinated with export subsidy reductions to attain significant welfare benefits. The dispersion of distortions, especially export subsidies, is more important than their level. A policy of harmonizing tariffs to the common external tariff of the European Community has virtually no effect on welfare.

In this paper a computable general equilibrium model of the Russian economy is used to assess the impact of accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), which encompasses improved market access, Russian tariff reduction, and reduction of barriers against multinational service providers. It is assumed that foreign direct investment in business services is necessary for multinationals to compete well with Russian business services providers, but cross-border service provision is also present. The model incorporates productivity effects in both goods and services markets endogenously, through a Dixit–Stiglitz framework. It is estimated that Russia will gain about 7.2% of the value of Russian consumption in the medium term from WTO accession and up to 24% in the long run. It is also estimated that the largest gains to Russia will derive from liberalization of barriers against multinational service providers. Piecemeal and systematic sensitivity analysis shows that the results are robust.

In this paper, the authors develop a 10-region comparative static computable general-equilibrium model of Russia to assess the impact of accession to the World Trade Organization on the regions of Russia. The model allows for foreign direct investment in business services and endogenous productivity effects from additional varieties of business services and goods produced under imperfect competition. The authors then show that these features are crucial to the results, as the welfare gains are about 20 times greater than in a constant-returns-to-scale model. The results for the estimated gains vary considerably across the regions; this is principally explained by the ability of the different regions to benefit from a reduction in barriers against foreign direct investment.

We employ a computable general equilibrium model of the Kazakh economy to assess the effect of accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO). Our model incorporates foreign direct investment by multinational business service providers and by multinational oil and gas companies; it contains endogenous productivity effects in both goods and services markets through a Dixit–Stiglitz (1977) framework. Our model is innovative in that we assess the effect of local content provisions for multinational oil and gas companies, provisions that are highly contentious in WTO accession negotiations. We show that our model features are crucial to the results, as the estimated gains are more than ten times larger than the gains from a constant return-to-scale model.

Despite economic theory and empirical literature that have shown that wide availability of business services contributes significantly to productivity gains and growth, economic modelers have been slow to meaningfully incorporate services into their models. This paper employs a 52-sector, small, open-economy computable general equilibrium model of the Tanzanian economy to assess the impact of the liberalization of regulatory barriers against foreign and domestic business service providers in Tanzania. The model incorporates foreign direct investment in services, and productivity effects in both goods and services markets endogenously through a Dixit-Stiglitz framework. The paper summarizes and builds on the surveys and policy notes of the regulatory regimes in business services in Tanzania, and estimates the ad valorem equivalent of barriers to foreign direct investment. The paper estimates significant gains to Tanzania from services reforms, especially in banking, maritime and road transportation Decomposition exercises reveal that the largest gains will derive from liberalization of non-discriminatory regulatory barriers.

A multiregion computable general equilibrium model is used to evaluate the regional, multilateral, and unilateral trade policy options of Mercosur from the perspective of the welfare of all potential partners in several proposed agreements. The focus for Brazil is on poverty impacts. The results show that the poorest households in Brazil experience gains of 1.5–5.5 percent of their consumption, which are about three to four times the average gains for Brazil. Protection in Brazil favors capital-intensive manufacturing relative to unskilled labor-intensive agriculture and manufacturing. So trade liberalization raises the return to unskilled labor relative to capital and disproportionately helps the poor

Even if trade liberalization results in aggregate welfare gains over all households, it is possible that the poorest households could lose. We illustrate two approaches to designing trade liberalization in Turkey which ensure that the poor will not lose. The first approach uses direct compensation to losers. The second approach uses limited policy reform, where exceptions to the across-the-board reform are chosen to meet the equity goal. In each case, we map out some of the efficiency costs of attaining these equity goals so as to inform policy makers about the least costly way of attaining them.

We employ a computable general equilibrium model of the Russian economy to assess the impact of accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) on income distribution and the poor. We incorporate all 55,098 households from the Russian Household Budget Survey as agents in the model. The model includes FDI in services and Dixit–Stiglitz endogenous productivity effects in imperfectly competitive goods and services sectors, features which are crucial to the results. We show that incorporating the diversity of households though a real household model is important for assessing household impacts, but getting the key model features right is equally important.

Iran is committed to substantial trade and market reform in its Third Five Year Development Plan. It started, however, with nontariff barriers on all products, a dual exchange rate regime with the market rate more than four times the official rate, and domestic energy product subsidies of about 90%. The authors develop a multisector computable general-equilibrium model with ten rural and ten urban households to analyze the various reforms, separately and together. Reflecting the large initial distortions, they find that the combined reforms could generate large welfare gains equal to about 50% of aggregate consumer income. Moreover, the results show that well-intentioned policies of commodity subsidies for the poor can have perverse effects. Even nontargeted direct income payments to all households (not just the poor) would enormously and progressively increase the incomes of the poor compared to the status quo.

This article uses a multisector, multicountry, computable general equilibrium model to examine Chile's strategy of “additive regionalism”—negotiating bilateral free trade agreements with all of its significant trading partners. Taking Chile's regional arrangements bilaterally, only its agreements with Northern partners provide sufficient market access to overcome trade diversion costs. Due to preferential market access, however, additive regionalism is likely to provide Chile with gains that are many multiples of the static welfare gains from unilateral free trade. At least one partner country loses from each of the regional agreements considered, and excluded countries as a group always lose. Gains to the world from global free trade are estimated to be vastly larger than gains from any of the regional arrangements…

We model the effects of completion of the internal market in the European Union on trade, production and market structure. The impetus for change comes from the removal of border costs, as well as increased competition from the greater ability of EU buyers to substitute among the products of different EU producers. In turn, this increased competition arises from the single market program on standards, government procurement, and dynamic learning effects. Removing the border costs results in relatively small welfare gains. Increased competition more than doubles the estimated benefits, and the steady state growth effect more than quadruples the welfare gains.

With a CGE model, we quantify the impact of the Customs Union between Turkey and the European Union (EU). Since the average tariff on non-agricultural imports will be less than 2 percent, the trade diversion costs of the Customs Union are quite small. Improved access to third country markets (through reciprocal preferential access agreements of the EU) results in the largest gains from the Customs Union, estimated overall to be about 1–1.5 percent of Turkish GOP. Applying the VAT uniformly (rather than raising it to compensate for the tariff revenue loss) will increase the welfare gain from joining the EU.

Using an applied general equilibrium model, we find that the EU–Morocco free trade area (FTA) will increase Moroccan welfare by about 1.5% of its GDP, showing that trade diversion is not dominant. The gains increase to about 2.5% of GDP if Morocco adds trade liberalization with the rest of the world while adjustment costs are only slightly higher, partly reflecting the absence of trade diversion with global liberalization. We show what are the key modeling assumptions and parameter choices that affect the estimates in models of this type, employing systematic sensitivity analysis as well as graphical exposition.

Despite the fact that many modern preferential trade agreements include commitments to foreign investors in services, the literature does not contain a modeling framework to analyze these commitments. In this paper we fill that void by developing a computable general equilibrium model of Kenya with monopolistic competition, foreign direct investment in services and Dixit-Stiglitz endogenous productivity effects. We use this model to assess preferential commitments by Kenya to foreign services providers. We show that there is an imperfect competition analogy to trade diversion in goods, whereby preferential commitments in services could be immizerising. Sensitivity analysis shows that losses are more likely the more technologically advanced are the excluded regions relative to the partner region, and, very importantly, the greater the rent capture on initial barriers in services. So an agreement with the technologically rich European Union is both worth more to Kenya and is more likely to be welfare increasing than an agreement with its less technologically rich African partners. From our systematic sensitivity analysis, in which the model is executed 30,000 times, and results are reported as confidence intervals of the sample distributions, we find that there is only a two percent chance that a services agreement with the Africa region would be immizerising for Kenya, but an agreement with the EU should produce gains with probability one.

In this paper the authors develop an innovative 21 sector computable general equilibrium model of Armenia to assess the impact on Armenia of a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement (DCFTA) with the EU, as well as further regional or multilateral trade policy commitments. They find that a DCFT A with the EU will likely result in substantial gains to Armenia, but they show that the gains derive from the deep aspects of the agreement. In order of importance, the sources of the gains are: (i) trade facilitation and reduction in border costs; (ii) services liberalization; and (iii) standards harmonization. A shallow agreement with the EU that focuses only on preferential tariff liberalization in goods will likely lead to small losses to Armenia primarily due to a loss of productivity from lost varieties of technologies from the Rest of the World region in manufactured products. Additional gains can be expected in the long run from an improvement in the investment climate. The authors estimate only small gains from a services agreement with the CIS countries, but significant gains from expanding services liberalization multilaterally.

In 2010, Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan formed the Eurasian Customs Union and imposed the Russian tariff as the common external tariff of the Customs Union. This resulted in almost doubling the external average tariff of the more liberal Kazakhstan. Russia has benefited from additional exports to Kazakhstan under the protection of the higher tariffs in Kazakhstan. But estimates reveal that the tariff changes resulted in substantial transfers from Kazakhstan to Russia as importers in Kazakhstan now purchase lower quality or higher priced Russian imports that are protected under the tariff umbrella of the common external tariff. Transfers from the Central Asian countries to Russia were the reason the Eurasian Economic Community (known as EurAsEC) failed, so this bodes badly for the ultimate success of the Eurasian Customs Union. What is different, however, is that the Eurasian Customs Union and its associated Common Economic Space aim to reduce non-tariff barriers and improve trade facilitation, and also to allow the free movement of capital and labor, liberalize services, and harmonize some regulations. Estimates by my colleagues and I show that if substantial progress could be made in trade facilitation and reducing non-tariff barriers, this could make the Customs Union positive for Kazakhstan and other potential Central Asian members. Unfortunately, so far the Customs Union has made these matters worse. But Russia's accession to the World Trade Organization will eventually substantially reduce the transfers from Kazakhstan to Russia. Progress with non-tariff barriers and trade facilitation, however, will take a strong political commitment from Russia which we have not yet seen. But if that Russian political leadership is forthcoming, the Eurasian Customs Union could succeed where its predecessor failed.

The following sections are included:

• Author Index
• Subject Index