Amrita Ray Chaudhuri

Trade Liberalization and the Profitability of Mergers: a Global Analysis*

We analyze the effects of bilateral tariff reductions on the profitability of cost-reducing horizontal mergers. Given Cournot competition in a two-country world, for any positive tariff below a certain threshold, marginal trade liberalization is shown to encourage only those domestic mergers with sufficiently large cost-savings and to discourage the rest. For tariffs close to, but smaller than, the prohibitive tariff, however, marginal trade liberalization necessarily encourages all domestic mergers. Moreover, we show that for a given level of cost-savings, the impact of marginal trade liberalization may not reliably predict that of nonmarginal liberalization. Although at high tariffs, domestic mergers are shown to be unambiguously more profitable than cross-border mergers, near free trade, mergers which yield the most cost-savings become the most profitable. Thus, when comparing domestic and cross-border mergers, trade liberalization encourages the type which yields the most cost-savings. Copyright

Adaptation Effectiveness and Free-Riding Incentives in International Environmental Agreements

While an international agreement over the reduction of greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions proves to be elusive, there is a large and growing support for investment in developing more effective technologies to adapt to climate change. We show that an increase in effectiveness of adaptation will diminish the incentive of individual countries to free-ride on a global agreement over emissions. Moreover, we show that this positive effect of an increase in adaptations effectiveness can also be accompanied by an increase in the gains from global cooperation over GHGs emissions.

International Environmental Agreements in the Presence of Adaptation

We show that adaptive measures undertaken by countries in the face of climate change, apart from directly reducing the damage caused by climate change, may also indirectly mitigate greenhouse gas emissions by increasing the stable size of international agreements on emission reductions. Moreover, we show that the more effective the adaptive measure in terms of reducing the marginal damage from emissions, the larger the stable size of the international environmental agreement. In addition, we show that larger coalitions, in the presence of adaptation, may lead to lower global emission levels and higher welfare.

Cleaner Technologies and the Stability of International Environmental Agreements

Abstract: This paper shows that, if countries are farsighted when deciding whether to defect from a coalition, then the implementation of cleaner technologies may jeopardize the chances of reaching an international environmental agreement. The grand coalition may be destabilized by the implementation of cleaner technologies, ultimately resulting in higher global emissions and lower global welfare. We further show that the higher the stock of pollution at the instant when the cleaner technology is implemented, the more likely that the above mechanism unfolds. We examine a reduction in the emission per output ratio as well as measures that enhance the natural rate of decay of stock pollutants.

Welfare Effect of Mergers and Multilateral Trade Liberalization

In a two-country model where firms behave a la Cournot, we show that trade liberalization increases (decreases) the social desirability of those mergers that generate sufficiently large (small) reductions in marginal cost. There exists a range of intermediate levels of marginal cost savings such that marginal tariff reductions increase (decrease) the desirability of merger at sufficiently low (high) tariff levels. Moreover, in the neighborhood of free trade, we show that if trade liberalization increases the profitability of a merger, it necessarily also increases its desirability.

International Environmental Agreements: Doomed to Fail or Destined to Succeed? A Review of the Literature

We survey the economics literature on International Environmental Agreements (IEAs). We classify the extant literature into the following categories: pure IEA games without linkages, which focus on a single externality stemming from global pollution; IEA games with side payments and issue linkages, which consider carrot or stick mechanisms to lure cooperators or punish defectors; political economy models, which examine intra- and inter-governmental issues that affect international negotiations; design issues of IEAs; behavioral factors, which affect the willingness of countries to cooperate; and additional externalities resulting from open economy issues and adaptation, which interact with the global pollution externality and affect the free-riding incentives of countries. Based on this classification of the literature, we attempt to identify conditions under which an international environmental agreement would be sustainable and effective.

Cross‐Border Mergers and Market Segmentation

This paper shows that cross-border mergers are more likely to occur in industries which serve multiple segmented markets rather than a single integrated market, given that cost functions are strictly convex. The product price rises in the market where an acquisition is made but falls in the other, decreasing the acquisition price of other firms (in contrast to the results in the existing merger literature on integrated markets). Although the sum of consumer surplus across the countries may rise in response to a given acquisition, one of the countries gains at the expense of the other.

Transboundary Pollution, Trade Liberalization and Environmental Taxes

In a bilateral trade framework, we examine the impact of tari¤ reduction on the op- timal pollution tax and social welfare when pollution is transboundary. Strategic considerations lead countries to distort their pollution tax in the non-cooperative equilibrium. Trade liberalization changes the distortion, and consequently the pol- lution tax and welfare, in ways that depend on the extent to which pollution is transboundary. We find that when the pollution damage parameter is sufficiently small (large), bilateral tariff reduction always decreases (increases) the pollution tax, irrespective of the value of the transboundary pollution parameter. However, when the pollution damage parameter takes intermediate values, bilateral tari¤ reduction decreases the pollution tax if and only if the transboundary pollution parameter is sufficiently large (or even sufficiently small, in certain cases). More- over, with pollution being transboundary, the impact of trade liberalization on welfare is non-monotonic and concave. The greater the extent to which pollution crosses borders, the more likely is trade liberalization to reduce welfare.

Acquisitions by Multinationals and Trade Liberalization

This paper develops a theoretical framework where a multinational firm (MNE) is allowed to acquire or sell a productive asset in multiple segmented asset markets. The asset is used to produce a final good which can be sold in multiple countries, with segmented product markets, undergoing trade liberalization. I explicitly model the asset markets as well as the product markets. The paper identifies initial conditions in terms of the MNEs pre-liberalization asset holdings across different segmented markets as a crucial factor for determining whether merger waves are triggered by trade liberalization. The more asymmetric the pre-liberalization asset holdings of the MNE across the multiple segmented markets, the more likely that trade liberalization induces an international merger wave that may harm consumers by raising product prices in multiple markets.

Cross-Border Mergers and Market Segmentation: Cross-Border Mergers and Market Segmentation

This paper shows that cross�?border mergers are more likely to occur in industries which serve multiple segmented markets rather than a single integrated market, given that cost functions are strictly convex. The product price rises in the market where an acquisition is made but falls in the other, decreasing the acquisition price of other firms (in contrast to the results in the existing merger literature on integrated markets). Although the sum of consumer surplus across the countries may rise in response to a given acquisition, one of the countries gains at the expense of the other.