Trade and fisheries subsidies

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Bayramoglu, Basak; Copeland, Brian R.; Jacques, Jean-Francois
• 署名单位: AgroParisTech; INRAE; Universite Paris Saclay; University of British Columbia; Universite Gustave-Eiffel; Universite Paris-Est-Creteil-Val-de-Marne (UPEC); Universite PSL; Universite Paris-Dauphine; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); Institut de Recherche pour le Developpement (IRD); Laboratoire dEconomie de Dauphine LEDa
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-1996
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jinteco.2018.01.009
• 发表日期: 2018
• 页码: 13-32
• 关键词: TRADE AGREEMENTS; fisheries; renewable resources; subsidies; Transferable quotas

摘要

Many renewable resource sectors are heavily subsidized and yet the resources are also seriously depleted. World Trade Organization members included subsidies in a key renewable resource sector (fisheries) in the Doha round of trade negotiations, which subsequently stalled. This paper develops a simple model to show why prospects for a deal on fisheries subsidies may be difficult. Typically international spillover effects create incentives among exporters to negotiate reductions in subsidies: one country's subsidy worsens other exporters' terms of trade. These incentives may not exist in fisheries for 3 reasons. First, open access fishery supply curves are backward bending and so if fisheries are depleted, subsidies raise prices (by reducing sustainable harvesting) and improve other exporters' terms of trade. Second, ecological constraints put an upper bound on sustainable harvesting. This means that subsidies that increase employment may have no effect on output and hence generate no international spillover effects if resources are well managed. And third, even if governments were compelled to reduce fishery subsidies, there may be no spillover benefits to trading partners because of policy substitution: governments would be motivated to weaken other regulations targeting the fish sector. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.