We analyze optimal protection when a benevolent government must maintain nonnegative domestic profits and when the domestic import-competing firm has private information about its costs. A costly audit mechanism can deter strategic manipulation of this private information. We show that a high-penalty/lowprobability of investigation is optimal when the shadow price of the firm profit is low compared with the audit cost. A low-penalty/high-probability of investigation is optimal when there is a low investigation cost and a high shadow price of firm profit. In this latter case, the trade authority obtains truthful announcements by directly auditing the firm.
When imports surge, governments often must seek simultaneously to satisfy protectionist pressures through increased tariffs, induce adjustment to foreign competition, and minimize consumer costs of protection. The WTO's safeguard clause can be viewed as an attempt to resolve these potentially conflicting goals since it allows governments to offer an implicit contract to protected industries to induce adjustment. In this paper, we show that with asymmetric information about costs, protected industries behave strategically which leads to under-adjustment. The safeguard clause therefore cannot optimally resolve the conflict among domestic political objectives.
Within a duopoly strategic trade policy model, we analyze the effect of foreign strategic trade policies on domestic welfare when the domestic government pursues a laissez-faire import policy. With Cournot competition and domestic production and consumption, an increase in the foreign strategic export subsidy increases domestic welfare when the domestic price exceeds the foreign firm marginal cost. With Bertrand competition, an increase in the foreign strategic export tax has ambiguous effects on domestic welfare and depends on the degree of product differentiation and domestic cross-price elasticity of demand between domestic and foreign goods.
We analyze optimal protection when a benevolent government must maintain nonnegative domestic profits and when the domestic import‐competing firm has private information about its costs. A costly audit mechanism can deter strategic manipulation of this private information. We show that a high penalty/low probability of investigation is optimal when the shadow price of the firm profit is low compared with the audit cost. A low penalty/high probability of investigation is optimal when there is a low investigation cost and a high shadow price of firm profit. In this latter case, the trade authority obtains truthful announcements by directly auditing the firm.
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