Profit-Shifting Export Subsidies and the Sustainability of Free Trade.

This paper analyzes trade wars and the sustainability of free trade in the J. A. Brander and B. J. Spencer (1985) model of profit-shifting export subsidies. It is shown that both countries will usually be worse-off if there is a trade war than under free trade but that one country may be better-off if its firm is very competitive. In an infinitely repeated version of the Brander-Spencer game, it is shown that free trade is sustainable as a perfect equilibrium if the two countries are sufficiently similar and the discount factor is sufficiently large. Copyright 1993 by Scottish Economic Society.