Public Policy, Private Preferences, And The Japanese Trade Pattern

As nontariff forms of trade protection proliferate it has become more difficult to analyze the impact of trade policy on trade flows. In a number of well-known papers researchers have attempted to infer the impact of trade policy indirectly by ascribing to trade policy the differences between actual and predicted trade flows. Much of the work has been applied to analysis of Japanese trade policy, and the conclusions of these studies have differed widely. Some previous research has also ascribed a role to the keiretsu, or networks of affiliated firms, in explaining Japan's apparently distinctive trade performance. This paper presents a model that integrates data on factor endowments, observable protection in traditional and nontraditional forms, and the keiretsu. It extends existing research in two principal ways. First, alternative cross-national models of comparative advantage are nested to permit the identification of critical modeling assumptions underlying the divergent conclusions of the previous studies. Second, the results of the indirect method are externally validated by confronting these inferences with data on trade policy and the keiretsu. The results indicate that trade policy and the keiretsu have an important impact on Japanese trade performance. © 1997 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology