Jesper Jensen

The Impact of Liberalizing Barriers to Foreign Direct Investment in Services: The Case of Russian Accession to the World Trade Organization

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. Copyright

Modeling Services Liberalization: The Case of Tanzania

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.

Energy Market Projections and Differentiated Carbon Abatement in the European Union

We analyze the economic effects of the differentiated targets for carbon abatement in six European Union member states. Our recursively-dynamic model includes a detailed representation of trade and energy consumption and incorporates optimistic projections for future energy markets provided by the European Commission as the Business-as-Usual scenario. In the base case we find that the EU implementation of the Kyoto Protocol implies low overall costs and a relatively even cost distribution across member states. We also show that a less optimistic development in energy efficiency implies higher costs in all countries, especially in those with high abatement costs. Finally, we find that uniform abatement targets increase overall costs marginally but changes the cost distribution significantly, holding total EU emissions constant.

What are the Gains from a Multi-Gas Strategy?

The Kyoto Protocol assigns limits for the aggregate emissions of six greenhouse gases, but most economic analyses focus on CO2 abatement. What are the potential gains if policy makers exploit the flexibility in a multi-gas abatement strategy? We extend the EDGE model to include sinks and non-CO2 gases and show that a multi-gas strategy reduces costs by 20-35% in the Western Annex B countries. Marginal abatement costs decrease around 30%, and the cost-effective abatement mix involves relatively more abatement of the non-CO2 gases, which offers many low costs abatement options. Lower marginal abatement costs decrease domestic action by reducing the costs of emissions imports, whereas more low cost abatement options increases domestic action. The low cost abatement options increase domestic action, whereas lower marginal abatement costs reduces domestic action by making imports of emissions cheaper. The net effect of a multi-gas strategy on domestic action is therefore not given a priori. We show that a multi-gas strategy reduces domestic action around 2% in the United States and increases domestic action by around 8% in the European Union. Our sensitivity analyses finally show that the relatively weak growth in non-CO2 baseline emissions accounts for a large share of the savings associated with a multi-gas strategy.

Deep Trade Policy Options for Armenia: The Importance of Trade Facilitation, Services and Standards Liberalization

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.

Impact of Local Content Restrictions and Barriers against Foreign Direct Investment in Services : The Case of Kazakhstan's Accession to the World Trade Organization

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.

Regional Trade Policy Options for Tanzania: The Importance of Services Commitments

Despite the growing importance of commitments to foreign investors in services in regional trade agreements, there are no applied general equilibrium models in the literature that assess these regional impacts. This paper develops a 52 sector applied general equilibrium model of Tanzania with foreign direct investment, and uses that model to assess Tanzanias regional and multilateral trade options. The model incorporates the features of the modern theory of international trade that has shown empirically that trade and foreign direct investment can increase productivity, and trade and foreign direct investment with technologically advanced countries is especially valuable for that purpose. To assess the sensitivity of the results to parameter values, the model is executed 30,000 times, and the results are reported as confidence intervals of the sample distributions. The analysis finds that a 50 percent preferential reduction in the ad valorem equivalents of barriers in all business services by Tanzania with respect to its African regional partners would be slightly beneficial for Tanzania. But wider liberalization, with larger partners or multilaterally, it will yield much larger gains due to providing access to a much wider set of service providers. Finally, the results show that the largest gains in services would be derived from reduction of regulatory barriers that are geographically non-discriminatory.

Trade, foreign exchange, and energy policies in the Islamic Republic of Iran : reform agenda, economic implications, and impact on the poor

The Islamic Republic of Iran has committed itself to substantial trade and market reform in its Third Five-Year Development Plan. It started out 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 subsidies equal to about 90 percent of the cost of energy products. Many of these policies were justified as helping the poor. To analyze the effect of the reforms, separately and together, the authors develop a multisector computable general equilibrium model with 10 rural and 10 urban households. They find that the combined reforms could generate welfare gains equal to about 50 percent of aggregate consumer income. These gains reflect the large initial distortions-for example, energy subsidies equal to about 18 percent of GDP, and retail energy prices equal to about 10 percent of world market prices. Separately, trade reform would lead to gains of about 5 percent of income, exchange rate reform to gains of 7 percent of income, and energy pricing reform to gains of 33 percent of income. The authorsresults show that well-intentioned commodity subsidy policies for the poor can have perverse effects. Direct income payments to all households (not just the poor) would vastly increase the incomes of the poor compared with the status quo. Moreover, if the combined reforms were implemented, the poorest rural household would receive gains equal to about 290 percent of its income, and the poorest urban household gains equal to about 140 percent of its income.

The Importance of Telecommunications Reform in Russia's Accession to the WTO

What can Russia gain from committing to reform its telecommunications sector as part of its accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO)? We employ a computable general equilibrium model of the Russian economy that incorporates foreign direct investment (FDI). Liberalization of barriers to FDI in services sectors results in endogenous productivity effects through Dixit-Stiglitz (1977) variety effects. We find that reducing Russian barriers to FDI in telecommunications is crucial to Russia reaping full gains from WTO accession--1.6 percent of the value of Russian consumption in the medium term, and potentially much greater long-term gains. It will also lead to reduced quality-adjusted prices paid by industrial and consumer users of telecommunications and increased productivity for Russian labor and capital. Demand for Russian labor employed in telecommunications should increase, because multinational telecommunications companies employ mostly Russian labor. Russian capital owners in telecommunications will likely be sought as joint-venture partners, and they can restructure their companies and obtain gains as partners with foreign firms. Wholly owned Russian firms that do not become part of multinational joint ventures, however, are likely to experience losses.

Deep Trade Policy Options for Armenia: The Importance of Services, Trade Facilitation and Standards Liberalization

This paper develops an innovative 21 sector computable general equilibrium model of Armenia to assess the impact on Armenia of a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement with the European Union, as well as further regional or multilateral trade policy commitments. The analysis finds that such an agreement with the European Union will likely result in substantial gains to Armenia, but shows 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 European Union 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 countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States, but significant gains from expanding services liberalization multilaterally.