Emanuel Ornelas

Does Regionalism Affect Trade Liberalization toward Non-Members?

We examine the effect of regionalism on unilateral trade liberalization using industry-level data on applied MFN tariffs and bilateral preferences for ten Latin American countries from 1990 to 2001. We find that preferential tariff reduction in a given sector leads to a reduction in the external (MFN) tariff in that sector. External liberalization is greater if preferences are granted to important suppliers. However, these “complementarity effects” of preferential liberalization on external liberalization do not arise in customs unions. Overall, our results suggest that concerns about a negative effect of preferential liberalization on external trade liberalization are unfounded.

Trade Creating Free Trade Areas and the Undermining of Multilateralism

This paper indicates that the consequences of regional trade agreements for the world trade system may be deceiving—an arrangements apparent virtue may constitute the source of its drawback. In a model where governments have political, as well as economic, motivations, I show that a free trade area induces its members to reduce protection against the non-members, and to do so sufficiently deeply to generate overall trade creation. Trade creation amplifies the excluded countries’ access to the integrating markets, but also reduces their extra gains from multilateral liberalization. Thus, trade creation can reverse the support of the excluded countries to liberalization on a multilateral basis. This is more likely to happen when governments outside the free trade area are more responsive to special interests.

Trade liberalization, outsourcing, and the hold-up problem

In a bilateral relationship where the supplier of an intermediate good has to make a relationship-specific investment but cannot write or enforce a complete contract, the standard hold-up problem of underinvestment arises. We show that this problem is aggravated when the buyer is located in a different country and that country has a tariff on imports of the intermediate good. In that context, trade liberalization enhances international trade through three distinct mechanisms: it directly reduces the cost of imported intermediate goods, it induces foreign suppliers to increase cost-reducing investments, and it may prompt the formation of vertical multinational firms. The extra investment increases the value of international bilateral relationships and amplifies the impact of lower tariffs on trade flows. The possible formation of vertical multilateral firms further increases investment and trade. These indirect effects of trade liberalization help explain why standard trade models fail to explain the observed large responses of trade volumes to small tariff reductions and rationalize current trends toward increased foreign outsourcing and intra-firm trade.

The ASEAN Free Trade Agreement: impact on trade flows and external trade barriers

Using detailed data on trade and tariffs from 1992-2007, the authors examine how the ASEAN Free Trade Agreement has affected trade with nonmembers and external tariffs facing nonmembers. First, the paper examines the effect of preferential and external tariff reduction on import growth from ASEAN insiders and outsiders across HS 6-digit industries. The analysis finds no evidence that preferential liberalization has led to lower import growth from nonmembers. Second, it examines the relationship between preferential tariff reduction and MFN tariff reduction. The analysis finds that preferential liberalization tends to precede external tariff liberalization. To examine whether this tariff complementarity is a result of simultaneous decision making, the authors use the scheduled future preferential tariff reductions (agreed to in 1992) as instruments for actual preferential tariff changes after the Asia crisis. The results remain unchanged, suggesting that there is a causal relationship between preferential and MFN tariff reduction. The findings also indicate that external liberalization was relatively sharper in the products where preferences are likely to be most damaging, proving further support for a causal effect. Overall, the results imply that the ASEAN agreement has been a force for broader liberalization.

Trust-Based Trade

Weak enforcement of international contracts can substantially reduce international trade. We develop a model where agents build reputations to overcome the difficulties that this institutional failure causes in a context of incomplete information. The model describes the interplay between institutional quality, reputations and the dynamics of international trade. We find that the conditional probability that a firm will stop exporting decreases and its foreign sales increase as the firm acquires greater export experience. The reason is that the informational costs that an exporter faces fall as the exporter becomes more confident about the reliability of its distributor. An improvement in the institutional quality of a country affects its imports through several distinct channels, as it changes the incentives of both current and potential exporters. Trade liberalization induces current exporters to increase their sales. It could induce entry as well, but this will happen only when the initial tariff is high and/or the institutional quality of the country is low.

Exchanging Market Access at the Outsiders' Expense: The Case of Customs Unions

Under a customs union, countries can exchange preferential market access by coordinating external tariffs to shift profits from excluded countries. I show that the exporting rents resulting from this coordination can offset trade diversion losses produced by the union, even if its members are relatively small in world markets. Such gains come, however, at the expense of excluded countries. I show that small countries can use customs unions also to foster multilateral cooperation, by increasing the incentives of excluded countries to support global free trade.

Protection and International Sourcing

We study the impact of import protection on relationship-specific investments, organizational choice and welfare. We show that a tariff on intermediate inputs can improve social welfare through mitigating hold-up problems. It does so if it discriminates in favor of the investing party, thereby improving its bargaining position. On the other hand, a tariff can prompt inefficient organizational choices if it discriminates in favor of less productive firms or if integration costs are low. Protection distorts organizational choices because tariff revenue, which is external to the firms, drives a wedge between the private and social gains to offshoring and integration.

Unbundling Ownership and Control

We study control contests under asymmetric information. Using a mechanism design approach, we fully characterize the optimal control contest mechanism. The optimal mechanism requires increasing the number of shares owned by the incumbent insider if he remains in control, while giving him a golden parachute that includes both shares and cash if he is deposed. The model underscores a novel explanation for the prevalence and persistence of the separation of ownership from control: efficiency in control contests is more easily achieved when ownership of cash flow rights is not concentrated in the hands of insiders.