主持人：马湘君，弗吉尼亚大学经济学博士，辽宁大学经济学部教授，研究方向为国际贸易、应用微观经济学、跨国公司与国际税收，所著论文发表于Journal of International Economics等一流SSCI期刊，主持国家自然科学基金、北京市社会科学基金等青年项目。曾任对外经济贸易大学副教授，北京大学国家发展研究院访问学者，德勤税务（美国硅谷办公室）、天职美国（加州尔湾办公室）转移定价经济学家/经理，并曾借调于商务部世界贸易组织司。

主讲人：Bi Zifan（York University）

时间：2023年1月13日（周五）9:30-10:30PM（北京时间）

地点：腾讯会议：942-377-496

语言：英文

题目：Integrated Analysis of the Effect of the Free Trade Agreement on Multilateral Trade Liberalization

摘要：Does formation of a Free Trade Agreement (FTA） lead to more or less protectionist trade policies towards nonmember countries? This paper builds on existing theoretical literature of FTAs to identify key channels through which preferential tariff reductions towards one group of countries may lead to either increased or reduced tariffs towards other countries. We develop a novel empirical strategy to identify the causal effect of FTAs on external tariffs of their members and estimate both channels using a sample that covers most FTAs formed since the 1990s. We find that countries tend to reduce their tariffs following FTA formation. Specifically, our results indicate that for an average industry and a pair of FTA partner countries, a one percentage point reduction in FTA tariff leads to 0.012-0.017 percentage points decrease in the MFN tariff. The effect is relatively small because most FTAs are between countries with small bilateral trade flows, but it is substantially larger for FTAs between main trade partners. For example, the mean elasticity of the MFN tariff with respect to the preferential tariff for the CanadaU.S. Free Trade Agreement is in the range of 0.2-0.25. Our findings support the idea that FTA formation provides member countries with economic incentives to liberalize their trade policies.