Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS

Discriminatory and Nondiscriminatory Trade Costs

Objective

In recent decades, Regional Trade Agreements (RTA) have become increasingly prevalent. A common way of assessing costs and benefits of RTAs is by using Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) approach. CGE based studies then use this framework to forecast for example, the trade growth, job creation, and welfare gains from forming RTAs. Unfortunately, their predictions poorly match the actual medium to long run outcomes of existing RTAs. With RTAs such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnerships (TTIP) currently under negotiation, CGE analysis plays a central role in the negotiation process. Therefore the accuracy of CGE models is of paramount importance. One way in which modern CGE models fall short is in their overly simplistic approach to trade costs. This includes both their measurement and their place in the underlying model. In particular, CGE studies to date fail to account for within-country trade costs, i.e. trade costs which are non-discriminatory as they apply to both domestic and foreign firms. Instead, they focus solely on discriminatory trade costs which apply only to foreigners. This has critical implications both in how to measure trade costs (as many compare within-country to cross-border trade and therefore combine discriminatory and non-discriminatory trade costs) and in how to include them in the analysis. As the goal of RTAs is to reduce trade barriers, this oversight can result in incorrect expectations on an RTA's impact and therefore wrong policy recommendations. The aim of COST project is to develop trade cost measures and specifications for modelling impacts of trade costs for CGE models that overcome these methodological and modelling limitations and consequently improve accuracy of future CGE studies in predicting the costs and benefits of RTAs.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.

You need to log in or register to use this function

Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

MSCA-IF-EF-ST - Standard EF

See all projects funded under this funding scheme

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) H2020-MSCA-IF-2015

See all projects funded under this call

Coordinator

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN, NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND, DUBLIN
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 187 866,00
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 187 866,00
My booklet 0 0