Protection and Import-Competing Product Selection in a Multi-Product Industry
研究在多产品行业中，政府通过补贴、关税或配额等保护形式帮助国内企业建立生产时，这些保护形式如何影响企业选择生产哪种产品，以及哪种保护形式能导致最优产品选择。
The analysis of trade patterns and policies involving multi-product industries has generated considerable recent interest.' There appear to be two reasons for this. One is the recognition that the standard trade model, with its homogeneous product sectors, is unable to explain important empirical phenomena, such as intra-industry trade, in a natural, straightforward fashion. The development of alternative structures that will explain the pattern and gains from such trade has usually involved consideration of industries which produce, or are capable of producing, a range of differentiated products. A second source of interest in trade models containing multi-product industries comes from the observation that many current commercial policy disputes arise in such industries (automobiles, steel and textiles being familiar examples). This, combined with the knowledge that different forms of trade restriction may have different effects on the composition of imports within such a sector, suggests the importance of placing policy discussion within a multi-product framework. This paper falls into the latter category. It examines the influence of the form of protection on the location of import-competing production within the industry's product spectrum, in a sector characterized by declining average costs. Its particular focus is the problem facing a government which wishes to establish domestic production in such a sector, knowing only that no such production will occur without some form of assistance or protection against imports. The following policy questions then arise. What is the type or range of domestic production that should be established? How will the form in which assistance or protection is offered to domestic producers in this industry (i.e., subsidy, tariff or quota) affect their product selection? Which forms will lead domestic producers to select the optimal product? How will the costs of establishing this domestic sector be spread across different types of consumers? These are the issues this paper addresses. Our analysis will be restricted to cases where the protection or assistance offered is sufficient to establish domestic production of a single product only, however. This side-steps the interesting, but difficult question of the relationship between the form and extent of protection and the number of products produced domestically. However, extensions in that direction should not alter the results below,