Free trade: what are the terms-of-trade effects?

Carsten Kowalczyk and Raymond Riezman
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Carsten Kowalczyk: The Fletcher School, Tufts University, Medford, MA 02155, USA

Chapter 10 in International Trade Agreements and Political Economy, 2013, pp 149-164 from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.

Abstract: AbstractChanges in trade policy affect a nation's economic welfare through terms-of-trade and volume-of-trade effects. A move to global free trade would imply higher world economic welfare equal to the sum of all nations' volume-of-trade, or efficiency, effects. Since the sum of the terms-of-trade effects across all nations is zero, terms-of-trade effects are contentious. Konishi, Kowalczyk and Sjöström (2003) have shown that if customs unions do not affect trade with non-member countries, immediate global free could be achieved if free trade were proposed together with international sidepayments equal to the terms of trade effects. How large would these terms of trade effects, and hence transfers, be? This paper presents estimates from a simple computable general equilibrium model of a world economy of perfect competition. We show that, in some cases, terms-of-trade effects are small compared to efficiency gains, and transfers are not necessary for free trade. In other cases, terms-of-trade gains may account for more than 50% of a country's gains from free trade and transfers could be large.

Keywords: International Trade; Political Economy; Theory of International Free Trade Agreements; Customs Unions; Tariff Dynamics; Storable Votes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Journal Article: Free trade: what are the terms-of-trade effects? (2009)
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