Robert M. Feinberg

The Effects of Foreign Exchange Movements on U.S. Domestic Prices

Inks that are used in the ink jet process consist of an aqueous solution of a watersoluble dye which contains in addition a hydroxyalkylformamide. The latter compound prevents premature drying of the ink without increase of the viscosity of the ink.

The Spread of Antidumping Regimes and the Role of Retaliation in Filings

Over the past decade, the world-wide use of antidumping has become very widespread – 41 WTO-member countries initiated antidumping cases over the 1995-2003 period. From another perspective, US exporters were subjected to 139 antidumping cases during this period, by enforcement agencies representing 20 countries. In this context, it is natural to consider whether antidumping filings may be motivated as retaliation against similar measures imposed on a country’s exporters. This is the focus of our study, though we also control for the bilateral export flows involved and non-retaliatory impacts of past cases, with other motivations – macroeconomic, industry-specific and political considerations – dealt with through industry, country and year fixed effects. Applying probit analysis to a WTO database on reported filings, we find strong evidence that retaliation was a significant motive in explaining the rise of antidumping filings over the past decade, though interesting differences emerge in the reactions to traditional and new users of antidumping.

Tariff Liberalisation and Increased Administrative Protection: Is There a Quid Pro Quo?

Theoretical models and intuition suggest that the amount of non- traditional protection against imports obtained through administrative procedures such as antidumping enforcement will increase as more traditional forms such as tariffs and quotas are lowered under multilateral trade agreements. This paper is the first empirical study of the role of tariff liberalization in the spread of antidumping. Through both correlations and regression approaches we analyze the relationship between tariff concessions made during the Uruguay Round trade negotiations and the filing of antidumping petitions, with particular interest in whether multilateral trade reductions have spurred the recent growth in new users of antidumping policies. We find that tariff reductions agreed to under the Uruguay Round not only increased the likelihood of a country using antidumping protection but also the total number of antidumping petitions filed by countries.

The Effects of Non-Tariff Measures on Prices, Trade, and Welfare: CGE Implementation of Policy-Based Price Comparisons

The global economic effects of eliminating certain significant categories of nontariff measures (NTMs) are estimated in a CGE context. As a first step, a database of institutional information identifying alleged instances of NTMs for particular products and countries is constructed based on WTO, U.S. Government, and EU sources, and compared with the UNCTAD policy inventory. This database is then concorded to a GTAP-feasible multiregion, multisector aggregation. Retail price data from the EIU CityData database, similarly concorded, are analyzed econometrically, taking into account systematic deviations from purchasing-power parity, to determine whether and to what extent the presence of alleged NTMs is associated with significantly higher prices. The estimated price effects are then used to calibrate a CGE simulation in order to obtain simulation estimates of trade and welfare effects of their removal, which can be disaggregated. Removal of the categories of NTMs under consideration yields global gains on the order of

INDUSTRY RENT SEEKING AND THE FILING OF 'UNFAIR TRADE' COMPLAINTS*

90 billion. These gains arise notably from liberalization by Japan and the European Union by region, and from liberalization of apparel and machinery/equipment by sector.

An Experimental Test of Discount-Rate Effects on Collusive Behaviour in Duopoly Markets

Abstract This paper adopts a rent-seeking framework to explain the incidence of antidumping and countervailing duty complaints brought to the U.S. International Trade Commission and the Department of Commerce. Tobit analysis on all 3-digit SIC industries is employed to examine the relationship between the frequency of ‘unfair trade’ complaints and such factors as industry concentration, unionization, capital intensity, and levels and/or changes in employment, price-cost margins, and import penetration. Large capital-intensive industries, particularly those facing employment losses and rising import shares, are found to be most likely to file complaints. Protection of quasi-rents accruing to capital and labor, rather than protection of monopoly returns, appears to be the primary impetus behind the filing of unfair trade complaints.

Mutual forbearance as an extension of oligopoly theory

Game theory suggests that the ability to sustain collusive equilibria in duopoly markets depends on sufficiently low rates of time preference. This proposition has never been subjected to experimental test, possibly because of the difficulty of inducing collusive behavior in experimental markets in the absence of discounting. The authors attempt to induce collusive equilibria in the absence of discounting. They then introduce discount rates of 25 and 150 percent by having payoffs decline each period at one of these two rates. The experimental results indicate that collusive duopoly equilibria are less likely to occur with higher rates of discounting. Copyright 1993 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

The Competitive Role of Credit Unions in Small Local Financial Services Markets

Abstract This paper extends a simple duopoly model to include the cross-market effects of mutual forbearance behavior. The model yields more familiar duopoly results as special cases. A more general m -firm, n -market oligopoly model is also considered. The results suggest that cross-market mutual forbearance effects can be viewed from the same theoretical perspective as are conventional assumptions about conjectural variations within markets.

The Economic Effects of Intellectual Property Right Infringements

Although there is a considerable literature on the role of market structure in banking markets, no attention has been given to the impact of the competitive discipline provided by credit unions on consumer credit rates offered by banks. After presenting a theoretical framework for understanding the impact credit unions should be expected to have, this article analyzes a pooled cross-sectional, time-series sample with roughly 1,000 observations on relatively small United States markets, with the focus on explaining bank rates for two types of consumer loans. Results confirm the previously observed role of market structure and suggest a significant role for credit unions in disciplining the exercise of market power by banks.

Fishing Downstream: The Political Economy of Effective Administered Protection

In this article, the authors use data from a small, but varied, sample of U.S. companies to examine the static welfare consequences of foreign infringement of U.S. intellectual property rights in five industry sectors. They estimate that infringement causes profit losses for the legitimate U.S. suppliers that are at least one percent as great as their total sales, that the static gains to consumers are more than half as great as the losses of legitimate producers (and might exceed these losses), and that the losses of the legitimate producers exceed the profits of infringers. They also find that legitimate producers spend relatively little to combat foreign infringement--less than 4 percent as much as their losses from such infringement. Copyright 1990 by the University of Chicago.