NATIONAL TREATMENT AT THE WTO: THE ROLES OF PRODUCT AND COUNTRY HETEROGENEITY

Kamal Saggi () and Nese Sara

International Economic Review, 2008, vol. 49, issue 4, pages 1365-1394

Abstract: This paper analyzes the World Trade Organization's (WTO's) national treatment (NT) clause in a two-country model where quality of goods and/or market size are heterogenous across countries. When market size is symmetric across countries, a reciprocal NT agreement (i) benefits the high-quality country, (ii) hurts the low-quality country, and (iii) delivers higher aggregate world welfare. However, such an agreement can arise in equilibrium if the high-quality country's market is relatively bigger and the quality gap between goods is small (i.e., goods are sufficiently "alike"). The qualitative nature of these results does not change when quality is endogenously determined. Copyright © (2008) by the Economics Department of the University of Pennsylvania and the Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association.

Date: 2008
View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-2354.2008.00515.x link to full text (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ier:iecrev:v:49:y:2008:i:4:p:1365-1394

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0020-6598

Access Statistics for this article

International Economic Review is edited by Kenneth I. Wolpin

More articles in International Economic Review from Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association
Address: 160 McNeil Building, 3718 Locust Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6297
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by ().