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Trade and Urban Seminars

A World Trading System for Whom? Evidence from Global Tariffs

Arnaud Costinot (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), joint with Rodrigo Adão, John Sturm Becko and Dave Donaldson


Wednesday 11 December 2024 12:30 - 14:00

SAL 1.04, 1st Floor Conference Room, Sir Arthur Lewis Building, LSE, 32 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3PH

About this event

We use global tariffs to reveal the weights that nations implicitly place on the welfare of their trading partners relative to their own. Our estimated welfare weights suggest that formal and informal rules of the world trading system make countries internalize the impact of their policies onto others to a substantial extent, though not fully. On average, countries place 19% less value on transfers to foreigners than transfers to their own residents. Across nations, we find that countries that put more weights on the welfare of foreigners also tends to receive higher welfare weights from them. Our results are consistent with international cooperation being sustained by a general form of reciprocity among nations: cooperative behavior by one country, in the form of a higher welfare weight, is reciprocated with cooperative behavior by its partner, also in the form of a higher welfare weight. This is true both within and outside the World Trade Organization.


Participants are expected to adhere to the CEP Events Code of Conduct.


Directions

This event will take place in SAL 1.04, 1st Floor Conference Room, Sir Arthur Lewis Building, LSE, 32 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3PH.

The building is labelled SAL on the LSE campus map. You can also find us on Google Maps. For further information, go to contact us.

Trade and Urban Seminars are part of the CEP's Trade programme and Urban programme.