TARIFF PROTECTION IN AN OPEN SPATIAL ECONOMY*
研究了在空间经济模型中，允许家庭优化选址和消费时，小国开放经济的最优关税为零，但若考虑国内利润和关税收入再分配，正关税可能仍为最优。
ABSTRACT Spatial pricing models have been used to illustrate a tariff's asymmetric effects on consumers located at different points in the protected economy, and to demonstrate that the optimum tariff for a small open spatial economy may be positive. In these models, the distribution of households has been taken as uniform and fixed. We extend the spatial model by allowing households to optimally locate and consume variable amounts of land, as well as the domestic‐ or foreign‐produced good. Land consumption, location rents, and the distribution of consumers are endogenous, responding to tariff‐induced changes in the delivered prices of the domestic and foreign goods. Within this limited general equilibrium framework, a neoclassical result resurfaces: from the perspective of private consumers, the optimum tariff in a small open economy is zero. The possibility of a positive optimum tariff, however, may remain intact in a more integrated model where domestic profits and tariff revenues are redistributed within the spatial economy.