TY  - JOUR
AU  - Staiger,Robert W.
AU  - Tabellini,Guido
TI  - Rules versus Discretion in Trade Policy:  An Empirical Analysis
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 3382
PY  - 1990
Y2  - June 1990
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w3382
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w3382.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Robert W. Staiger
Department of Economics
The University of Wisconsin
1180 Observatory Drive
Madison, WI  53705
Tel: 608/262-2265
Fax: 608/263-3876
E-Mail: rstaiger@wisc.edu

Guido Tabellini
IGIER Universita' Bocconi
Via Roentgen 1
20136 Milano
Italy
Tel: 39 2 583 6 3305; fax 3302
E-Mail: guido.tabellini@unibocconi.it
M1  - published as Robert W. Staiger, Guido Tabellini. "Rules versus Discretion in Trade Policy: An Empirical Analysis," in Robert E. Baldwin, editor, "Empirical Studies of Commercial Policy" University of Chicago Press, 1991 (1991)

AB  - We test empirically for evidence that government tariff-setting behavior depends on the degree of discretion with which policy-makers are endowed. We do this by studying government tariff choices under two distinct environments. One environment is that of tariffs set under the Escape Clause (Section 201 of the U.S. Trade Act of 1974). We argue that these decisions afford the government with ample opportunity to reoptimize, and with correspondingly little ability to commit. The other environment is the Tokyo Round of GATT negotiations and the determination of the set of exclusions from the general formula cuts. We argue that these decisions provided the government with a much diminished opportunity to reoptimize, and with a correspondingly greater ability to commit. Comparing decisions made in these two  environments allows us to ask whether the degree of policy discretion has a measurable impact on trade policy decisions. Our findings suggest that it does.
ER  -