Industrial Concentration Reverses the Timing in a Trade Policy Game

Abstract

Faced with an export subsidy by a foreign government, importing countries have to decide whether they should impose countervailing duties or not. Using a Cournot duopoly model, Collie (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv 130: 191–209) shows that the subgame perfect equilibrium occurs when the importing country sets its production subsidy and tariff at stage one and the foreign government sets its export subsidy at stage two. That is, an importing country will choose to commit itself not to use countervailing duties. In this paper, we extend Collie's duopoly model to the case of a Cournot oligopoly and show that the country in which industry is less concentrated tends to emerge as the Stackelberg leader.