The “New” Economics of Trade Agreements: From Trade Liberalization to Regulatory Convergence?
研究了政府为何有动机通过贸易协定约束国内监管政策，发现企业为迎合本地口味设计产品时，政府会利用监管保护主义诱导企业迁址，而高效贸易协定需协调监管细节。
What incentives do governments have to negotiate trade agreements that constrain their domestic regulatory policies? We study a model in which firms design products to appeal to local consumer tastes, but their fixed costs increase with the difference between versions of their product destined for different markets. In this setting, firms' profit‐maximizing choices of product attributes are globally optimal in the absence of consumption externalities, but national governments have unilateral incentives to invoke regulatory protectionism to induce firm delocation. An efficient trade agreement requires commitments not to engage in such opportunistic behavior. A rule requiring mutual recognition of standards can be used to achieve efficiency, but one that requires only national treatment falls short. When product attributes confer local consumption externalities, an efficient trade agreement must coordinate the fine details of countries' regulatory policies.