IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cje/issued/v44y2011i2p561-579.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does hidden information make trade liberalization more fragile?

Author

Listed:
  • Mathias Herzing

Abstract

This paper focuses on the impact of hidden information on strategic interaction in the context of trade agreements. In the presence of informational asymmetry it is possible that a tradeoff between liberalization and sustainability of cooperation emerges. It is shown that it may be optimal to agree on a degree of liberalization associated with a strictly positive ex ante probability of deviation occurring. In that case, cooperation will break down in finite time, and the optimal degree of liberalization cannot be applied indefinitely.

Suggested Citation

  • Mathias Herzing, 2011. "Does hidden information make trade liberalization more fragile?," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 44(2), pages 561-579, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:cje:issued:v:44:y:2011:i:2:p:561-579
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-5982.2011.01644.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5982.2011.01644.x
    Download Restriction: access restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1540-5982.2011.01644.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Susan Athey & Kyle Bagwell & Chris Sanchirico, 2004. "Collusion and Price Rigidity," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 71(2), pages 317-349.
    2. Green, Edward J & Porter, Robert H, 1984. "Noncooperative Collusion under Imperfect Price Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(1), pages 87-100, January.
    3. Athey, Susan & Bagwell, Kyle, 2001. "Optimal Collusion with Private Information," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 32(3), pages 428-465, Autumn.
    4. Robert C. Feenstra & Tracy R. Lewis, 1991. "Negotiated Trade Restrictions with Private Political Pressure," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(4), pages 1287-1307.
    5. Drew Fudenberg & David Levine & Eric Maskin, 2008. "The Folk Theorem With Imperfect Public Information," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Drew Fudenberg & David K Levine (ed.), A Long-Run Collaboration On Long-Run Games, chapter 12, pages 231-273, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    6. Baldwin, Richard, 1987. "Politically realistic objective functions and trade policy PROFs and tariffs," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 287-290.
    7. Mathias Herzing, 2011. "Does hidden information make trade liberalization more fragile?," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 44(2), pages 561-579, May.
    8. Martin, Alberto & Vergote, Wouter, 2008. "On the role of retaliation in trade agreements," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(1), pages 61-77, September.
    9. Bagwell, Kyle & Staiger, Robert W, 1990. "A Theory of Managed Trade," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(4), pages 779-795, September.
    10. Bernheim B. Douglas & Dasgupta Aniruddha, 1995. "Repeated Games with Asymptotically Finite Horizons," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 67(1), pages 129-152, October.
    11. Pedro Dal Bó, 2007. "Tacit collusion under interest rate fluctuations," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 38(2), pages 533-540, June.
    12. Rotemberg, Julio J & Saloner, Garth, 1986. "A Supergame-Theoretic Model of Price Wars during Booms," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(3), pages 390-407, June.
    13. Raymond Riezman, 2013. "Dynamic tariffs with asymmetric information," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Raymond Riezman (ed.), International Trade Agreements and Political Economy, chapter 6, pages 67-83, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    14. Dan Kovenock & Marie Thursby, 1992. "Gatt, Dispute Settlement And Cooperation," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 4(2), pages 151-170, July.
    15. Hungerford, Thomas L., 1991. "GATT: A cooperative equilibrium in a noncooperative trading regime?," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(3-4), pages 357-369, November.
    16. Abreu, Dilip & Pearce, David & Stacchetti, Ennio, 1986. "Optimal cartel equilibria with imperfect monitoring," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 251-269, June.
    17. Jensen, Richard & Thursby, Marie, 1990. "Tariffs with private information and reputation," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(1-2), pages 43-67, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mathias Herzing, 2011. "Does hidden information make trade liberalization more fragile?," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 44(2), pages 561-579, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Martin, Alberto & Vergote, Wouter, 2008. "On the role of retaliation in trade agreements," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(1), pages 61-77, September.
    2. Baomin Dong, 2013. "Cost-Based Anti-dumping as a Repeated Game," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 89, pages 95-105, June.
    3. Martin, Alberto & Vergote, Wouter, 2004. "Antidumping: Welfare Enhancing Retaliation?," MPRA Paper 5416, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Buzard, Kristy, 2017. "Self-enforcing trade agreements and lobbying," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 226-242.
    5. Chisik, Richard, 2012. "Trade disputes, quality choice, and economic integration," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(1), pages 47-61.
    6. Kaplow, Louis & Shapiro, Carl, 2007. "Antitrust," Handbook of Law and Economics, in: A. Mitchell Polinsky & Steven Shavell (ed.), Handbook of Law and Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 15, pages 1073-1225, Elsevier.
    7. Staiger, Robert W., 1995. "International rules and institutions for trade policy," Handbook of International Economics, in: G. M. Grossman & K. Rogoff (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 29, pages 1495-1551, Elsevier.
    8. Gerlach, Heiko, 2009. "Stochastic market sharing, partial communication and collusion," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 27(6), pages 655-666, November.
    9. Escobar, Juan F. & Llanes, Gastón, 2018. "Cooperation dynamics in repeated games of adverse selection," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 176(C), pages 408-443.
    10. Lee, Gea M., 2007. "Trade agreements with domestic policies as disguised protection," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(1), pages 241-259, March.
    11. Susan Athey & Kyle Bagwell & Chris Sanchirico, 2004. "Collusion and Price Rigidity," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 71(2), pages 317-349.
    12. Kyle Bagwell, 2009. "Self-Enforcing Trade Agreements and Private Information," NBER Working Papers 14812, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Tadashi Ito, 2007. "NAFTA and productivity convergence between Mexico and the US," IHEID Working Papers 26-2007, Economics Section, The Graduate Institute of International Studies, revised 27 Nov 2007.
    14. Joseph E. Harrington Jr. & Andrzej Skrzypacz, 2007. "Collusion under monitoring of sales," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 38(2), pages 314-331, June.
    15. David Genesove & Wallace P. Mullin, 2001. "Rules, Communication, and Collusion: Narrative Evidence from the Sugar Institute Case," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(3), pages 379-398, June.
    16. Lee, Gea M., 2010. "Optimal collusion with internal contracting," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 646-669, March.
    17. Susan Athey & Kyle Bagwell, 2008. "Collusion With Persistent Cost Shocks," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 76(3), pages 493-540, May.
    18. Kyle Bagwell & Chad P. Bown & Robert W. Staiger, 2016. "Is the WTO Passé?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 54(4), pages 1125-1231, December.
    19. David A. Miller, 2012. "Robust Collusion with Private Information," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 79(2), pages 778-811.
    20. Kyle Bagwell & Robert W. Staiger, 2004. "Enforcement, Private Political Pressure and the GATT/WTO Escape Clause," NBER Working Papers 10987, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • F13 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade Policy; International Trade Organizations
    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • C73 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Stochastic and Dynamic Games; Evolutionary Games
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cje:issued:v:44:y:2011:i:2:p:561-579. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Prof. Werner Antweiler (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ceaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.