Category Archives: Economic Development

Dictatorship, Democratization, and Trade Policy

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By Ben Zissimos (University of Exeter Business School)

In a landmark paper, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson argue that a key purpose of democratization is to resolve a commitment problem faced by a ruling elite under the threat of revolution.[1]  Their motivation focuses on 19th and early 20th Century Europe, during which time a number of countries in the region democratized, thus originating a number of today’s mature democracies.  The commitment problem that Acemoglu and Robinson characterize arises if the elite cannot make sufficiently large transfers within a single period, to compensate the rest of society for the gains that they would enjoy from a revolution.  If transfers must be made over multiple periods, and if the threat of revolution may dissipate prior to the transfers being completed, then the elite will not be able to credibly commit to transfers large enough to defuse the threat of revolution. By extending the franchise, the elite transfer power to set taxes to the rest of society.  Thus, democratization enables the elite to make a credible commitment to transfers over multiple periods sufficiently large to defuse the threat of a revolution.

In Acemoglu and Robinson’s model, domestic lump-sum redistributive taxation is the policy instrument used by the elite to make transfers from the elite to the rest of society.  This policy instrument simplifies the framework nicely in order to focus on the commitment role of democratization.  Yet subsequent research has shown that domestic fiscal capacity did not exist for redistributive taxation prior to extension of the franchise.  The power to tax is taken for granted in a great deal of mainstream public finance.  But, as Tim Besley and Torsten Persson note, a ruling elite may have an incentive not to install domestic fiscal capacity if they think it will facilitate redistribution from them to the rest of society.[2]  Supportive of this view, Toke Aidt and Peter Jensen show for the time period that Acemoglu and Robinson discuss, that countries in Europe and elsewhere typically did not have domestic redistributive taxation prior to extension of the franchise.  These observations open the door to a discussion of whether domestic redistributive income taxation could in fact have been used as part of a strategy to resolve the commitment problem through democratization.

In a recent paper, I identify the circumstances under which trade taxes, the capacity for which did exist in 19th-20th century Europe both prior to and after extension of the franchise, can be used to make such redistributions and hence resolve the commitment problem identified by Acemoglu and Robinson.[3]  I do this by combining Acemoglu and Robinson’s model with a classic Heckscher-Ohlin model with trade policy due to Wolfgang Meyer.[4]  The resulting new model yields insights that would not be available from either of the original models on their own.  For example, contrary to the recommendation of classical scholars, I show that when the group in power chooses its optimal trade policy, democratization may in fact go hand in hand with increased protectionism and a decline in economic efficiency.  This suggests that although democratization would broadly be regarded as desirable, it may have some adverse consequences.  In Acemoglu and Robinson’s original model, because taxation was lump-sum, policy changes associated with democratization could have no adverse efficiency implications.

My paper also identifies a new role for trade policy: that of maintaining political stability for a ruling elite regime.  Since the elite would always prefer to retain power (including the power to set trade taxes) rather than extend the franchise, the paper provides a way to think about when the elite can use trade policy to forestall democratization.[5] As an alternative to extending the franchise, the elite may be able to neutralize the threat of revolution and forestall democratization by making temporary concessions to the rest of society over trade policy, thus using trade policy to maintain their grip on power.  The framework that I develop makes it possible to delineate precisely where the elite face a commitment problem and hence must extend the franchise, and where they do not face a commitment problem and hence can use trade policy to forestall democratization.  I use the framework to motivate British and Prussian trade policy in the 19th Century, arguing that both of their ruling elites used trade policy to forestall democratization.

References

Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson (2000); “Why Did the West Extend the Franchise? Democracy, Inequality, and Growth in Historical Perspective.” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 115(4): 1167-1199. [Working paper version]

Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson (2006); Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy.  Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Toke S. Aidt and Peter S. Jensen, (2009); “Tax Structure, Size of Government and the Extension of the Voting Franchise in Western Europe, 1860–1938.” International Tax and Public Finance, 16: 160-175. [Working paper version]

Timothy Besley and Torsten Persson, (2009); “The Origins of State Capacity: Property Rights, Taxation, and Politics.” American Economic Review, 1218–1244. [Working paper version]

Timothy Besley and Torsten Persson, (2014); “Why Do Developing Countries Tax So Little?” Journal of Economic Perspectives 28(4): 99–120. [Working paper version]

Sebastian Galiani and Gustavo Torrens (2014); “Autocracy, Democracy and Trade Policy.” Journal of International Economics,  93(1): 173-193. [Working paper version]

Wolfgang Mayer, (1984); “Endogenous Tariff Formation.” American Economic Review, 74(5): 970-985.

Ben Zissimos (2017); “A Theory of Trade Policy under Dictatorship and Democratization.” Journal of International Economics, 109: 85-101. [Working paper version]

Endnotes

[1] Acemoglu and Robinson (2000). See also Acemoglu and Robinson (2006) for a broader discussion.

[2] Besley and Persson (2009); see also Besley and Persson (2014)

[3] Zissimos (2017)

[4] Mayer (1984)

[5] Galianni and Torrens (2014) also have an element of this, in that an elite can choose between autarky and free trade to help maintain political stability.  In my paper, the full spectrum of trade policy between autarky and free trade can also be considered, including the trade policy revenue implications, making it possible to analyze incremental changes to trade policy.  This makes it possible to show how trade policy can be used to defuse the threat of revolution in the absence of all domestic fiscal capacity.  In turn this opens the door to a consideration of elite trade policy reactions to world price shocks.

The GATT/WTO’s Special and Differential Treatment of Developing Countries

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By Ben Zissimos (University of Exeter Business School)

Special and differential treatment (SDT) is effectively a set of exemptions from MFN extended to developing country members of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)/World Trade Organization (WTO).[1]  (MFN (most favored nation) treatment is the principle that any terms agreed between two parties to a trade agreement will automatically be extended to all others, and is a central pillar of the GATT/WTO).  SDT has two components: an access component, whereby developing countries are granted access to developed country markets, and a ‘right to protect’ component, whereby they do not have to reciprocate market access concessions that the developed countries make.  The intellectual underpinnings of SDT were: (i) that under the Gold Standard poor countries would tend to suffer from balance of payments problems that could be remedied through protection; (ii) the Prebisch-Singer thesis that developing countries would face secular decline in their terms of trade, which could be remedied by preferential access to developed country markets; and (iii) by the logic of infant industry protection, whereby fledgling industries need an initial period of protection to grow in a secure domestic market, before eventually competing abroad.  Ironically, there was no SDT during the 1950s-60s when the research community was broadly sympathetic to the idea that development can benefit from protectionism.  SDT measures were formally adopted mainly in the Tokyo Round that took place in the 1970s, right around the time that the research community was beginning to argue that development should be supported by outward-looking trade regimes to enhance economic efficiency.[2]

As a result of this history, there is an awkward mismatch between what mainstream economics would prescribe, an outward oriented development strategy, and the protectionism that is allowed for under SDT.  According to one mainstream view, a trade agreement enables countries to escape from a terms-of-trade driven prisoner’s dilemma, whereby they have a collective incentive to liberalize trade to maximize efficiency globally but an individual incentive to adopt protection in order to improve their terms of trade.  Accordingly, the benefits to a trade agreement are based on the exchange of balanced concessions.  So developing countries are currently hurt by high protection of agriculture in developed countries because, under SDT, developing countries have not come to the table offering balanced concessions of their own.  Under this view, developing countries should eschew SDT.  A second view holds that the purpose of a trade agreement is to enable governments to tie their hands against protectionist interests in their own countries.  In line with this view, many developing countries have cited commitment to openness against protectionist interests at home as the main reason why they wanted to become members of the WTO.  Here again, the aim would seem to be to eschew the kinds of protectionist measures allowed by SDT.  So a basic recommendation from mainstream economic research would be that while trade agreements under the WTO have a role to play in economic development, SDT may in fact be inimical to the development process.[3]

Several recent papers have called into question key elements of the arguments on which the above basic recommendation rests.  For example, a key implication of the terms-of-trade motivation for a trade agreement is that, if developing countries do not make any concessions of their own while developed countries do, the terms of trade will adjust to ensure that trade flows will not change at all for developing countries.  Consequently they cannot gain from any market access concessions that developed countries make.  Yet careful econometric research has found evidence (though not yet fully conclusive) that developing country exports have increased significantly for trade agreements involving SDT.  However, it is not yet clear what the basis is for this increase.  Has the surge in exports facilitated scale gains that could underpin an export-led growth strategy?  Or has it only allowed exporters to collect rents as the terms of trade adjust?[4]  A different line of research suggests that under the commitment-based motivation for a trade agreement, liberalization by a developing country must be delayed relative to a developed country if it is to be incentive compatible.  This would provide motivation for the use of SDT measures as support for phased liberalization by developing countries, akin to how they were used in the Uruguay Round, rather than using them as the basis for an outright exemption from liberalization.[5]  There appears to be a significant opportunity both to further our understanding of the effects of SDT in past trade agreements and to assess the role that it should play (if any) in future development strategies.

References

Bagwell, K., C.P. Bown, and R.W. Staiger, (2016); “Is the WTO passé?” Journal of Economic Literature 54 (4): 1125-1231. [Working paper version]

Bagwell, K., and R.W. Staiger, (2014) “Can the Doha Round be a Development Round? Setting a Place at the Table.” Published in R.C. Feenstra and A.M. Taylor (eds.), Globalization in an Age of Crisis: Multilateral Economic Cooperation in the Twenty-First Century, NBER, University of Chicago Press, 2014, 91-124. [Working paper version]

Conconi, P., and C. Perroni, (2012); “Conditional versus Unconditional Trade Concessions for Developing Countries.” Canadian Journal of Economics 45, 613-631. [Working paper version]

Conconi, P., and C. Perroni, (2015); “Special and Differential Treatment of Developing Countries in the WTO.” World Trade Review 14, 67-86. [Working paper version]

Gil-Pareja, S., R. Llorca-Vivero, and J.A. Martínez-Serrano (2014); “Do Nonreciprocal Preferential Trade Agreements Increase Beneficiaries’ Exports?” Journal of Development Economics 107, 291-304.

Little, I.M.D., T. Scitovsky, and M. Scott, (1970); Industry and Trade in some Developing Countries: A Comparative Study, London: Oxford University Press, for the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development.

Ornelas, E., (2016); “Special and Differential Treatment for Developing Countries.” Chapter 7 in K. Bagwell & R. W. Staiger (eds.), Handbook of Commercial Policy, Elsevier/North Holland, Volume 1B:  369-432. [Working paper version]

Whalley, J., (1999); “Special and Differential Treatment in the Millennium Round.” World Economy, 22(8): 1065-1093. [Working paper version]

[1] This piece summarizes background research for a book that I am editing, titled The WTO and Economic Development.

[2] Whalley (1999) provides an excellent historical discussion of the origins of SDT, together with details of each of the relevant GATT Articles in which it is codified and when each was introduced.  He also provides a detailed discussion of the intellectual underpinnings. Little, Scitovsky and Scott (1970) were particularly influential in turning the tide toward outward oriented development strategies.

[3] See Bagwell, Bown and Staiger (2016) for a comprehensive review of the literature on the purpose of trade agreements under the GATT/WTO.  Bagwell and Staiger (2014) argue that, by the terms-of-trade motive, developing countries cannot benefit (nor loose) from multilateral trade agreements if they fail to make concessions under SDT because the volume of their trade does not change.

[4] See Gil-Pareja, Llorca-Vivero and Martinez-Serrano (2014) and the references therein for details.  See Ornelas (2016) for an excellent overview of the theoretical and econometric literature on SDT.

[5] See Conconi and Perroni (2012, 2015) for specific details, as well as the discussion by Ornelas (2016).

Understanding Fair Trade

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Fair Trade is a social initiative that attempts to aid small producers and workers in developing countries, by offering them better terms of trade and helping them to organize, both economically and politically.  It works through a certification system overseen by nongovernmental organizations, such as Fairtrade International.   A certified product signals to consumers that producers were paid a minimum price and that the product meets specific requirements for certification.  Most of the products are commodities, including coffee, tea, cocoa, flowers, sugar, fruits, gold, and honey.  Coffee has received most of the attention from research due to the large number of producers located in various developing countries.  Over time, researchers in economics have asked important questions about the effectiveness of Fair Trade in achieving its proposed economic development goals and the long term implications of the certification system.

Fair Trade sceptics are concerned about the distortions that price floors and the requirement that firms be ‘small’ to qualify for benefits introduce to incentives.  For example, it has been argued that producers will not seek to improve their production methods because remaining small enables them to keep Fair Trade certification (and the rents from the price floor). This perpetuation of inefficiency, it is argued, will prevent them from lifting themselves out of poverty. Sceptics also claim that a higher price can lead to over-supply and create additional distortions in the world market.

One response to the latter criticism is a theoretical model showing that when a Fair Trade certified product is treated as a differentiated product, with distinct supply and demand curves, and the number of Fair Trade contracts satisfies demand, the certification system does not result in over-supply.  If the intermediaries buying the certified products are oligopsonistic, the Fair Trade system enables producers to recover profit from the intermediaries.  Although this model, as well as other models in the literature, rely on the assumption that consumers care about the production process being socially or environmentally responsible, the market outcome improves without introducing additional distortions.  Other economic models that explore how free entry dissipates rents in the long run derive different conclusions. One model shows that, if demand is inelastic, producers have an incentive to continue entering the market until the expected benefit of Fair Trade certification equals the cost of acquiring it.  This means that the rents from the price floor are channeled towards the costs of certification, which would defeat the purpose of Fair Trade in helping poor producers.  However, this detrimental outcome is not assured in an environment where there are barriers to entry, such as an upper limit to firm size.

Finally, there are methodological issues related to the empirical evaluation of Fair Trade.  It is well documented in the literature that certified producers sell and produce more with better quality than non-certified ones.  However, it is unclear whether there is an omitted variable that causes them to produce more or, alternatively, whether the certification itself causes them to perform better.  Moreover, it is unclear what is driving producers into the certification process.  On the negative side, they are small, have limited access to credit, and limited market access.  On the positive side, they are found to be more entrepreneurial, have better organizational skills, and are more willing to co-operate with others.  This mix of findings suggests that some aspects of Fair Trade and its consequences are not yet well understood and more research in the topic is necessary.

Booth, Phlip and Linda Whtstone (2007) “Half a Cheer for Fair Trade,” Economic Affairs, 27 (2): 29-36. [working paper]

Collier, Paul (2007) The Bottom Billion, New York: Oxford University Press.

de Janvry, Alain, Craig McIntosh and Elizabeth Sadoulet (2015) “Fair Trade and Free Entry: Can a Disequilibrium Market Serve as a Development Tool?” The Review of Economics and Statistics, 97 (3): 567-573. [working paper]

Dragusanu Raluca and Nathan Nunn (2015) “The Impacts of Fair Trade Certification: Evidence From Coffee Producers in Costa Rica,” Working Paper

Dragusanu, Raluca, Daniele Giovannucci and Nathan Nunn (2014) “The Economics of Fair Trade,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 28 (3): 217-236.

Griffiths, Peter (2012) “Ethical Objections to Fairtrade,” Journal of Business Ethics, 105 (3): 357-373. [working paper]

Podhorsky, Andrea (2013) “Certification Programs and North-South Trade,” Journal of Public Economics 108: 90-104.

Podhorsky, Andrea (2015) “A Positive Analysis of Fairtrade Certification,” Journal of Development Economics, 116: 169-185.