Chad Bown, Peterson Institute for International Economics

Global Supply Chains and Trade Policy

Authors: Emily J. Blanchard, Chad P. Bown, Robert C. Johnson

How do global supply chain linkages modify countries' incentives to impose import protection? Are these linkages empirically important determinants of trade policy? To address these questions, we introduce supply chain linkages into a workhorse terms-of-trade model of trade policy with political economy. We test the predictions of this model using newly assembled data on bilateral applied tariffs, temporary trade barriers, and value-added contents for 14 major economies over the 1995-2009 period. Our results imply that global supply chains matter for trade policy, both in principle and in practice.

Chad P. Bown is a Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, DC, a Research Fellow at CEPR in London and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.  Bown was formerly Professor of Economics at Brandeis University, and he served as Senior Economist for International Trade in the White House on President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers. Most recently he was a Lead Economist for international trade at the World Bank. Bown has published three books and several articles in scholarly journals, including the American Economic Review and the Journal of International Economics. He has a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

Sponsored by Trade, Development and Political Economy at the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs