At the end of July 2013 the photovoltaic (PV) trade conflict between China and the European Union was resolved through a compromise whose key elements are price and quantity undertakings promised by China. A minimum price and a maximum export quantity should help to calm PV markets for the time...

This paper examines the rationale for the rules on domestic subsidies in international trade agreements through a framework that emphasizes commitment. We build a model where the policy-maker has a tariff and a production subsidy at its disposal, taxation can be distortionary and the...

As of November 2010, more than 300 regional trade agreements (RTAs) were in force. Approximately two-thirds of them had been notified to the WTO. Each of these RTAs had, implicitly or explicitly, established a regional legal framework for the application of intra-regional, and sometimes...

This paper examines the rationale for the rules on domestic subsidies in international trade agreements through a framework that emphasizes commitment. We build a model where the policy-maker has a tariff and a production subsidy at its disposal, taxation can be distortionary and the...

This paper develops an efficiency theory of contingent trade policies. We model the competition for a domestic market between one domestic and one foreign firm as a pricing game under incomplete information about production costs. The cost distributions are asymmetric because the foreign firm...

This paper uses highly detailed, quarterly data for five major industrialized economies to estimate the impact of macroeconomic fluctuations on import protection policies over 1988:Q1 - 2010:Q4. First, estimates on a pre-Great Recession sample of data provide evidence of two key relationships....

A new trade war is looming as the EU is now embarking on its first countervailing duty (CVD) against Chinese subsidies over coated fine paper. As the EU gives a significant amount of subsidies to local production, China is not short of sectors to retaliate against - especially as the evidence in...