Problem Set 3 Due Monday, April 5

Your assignment is to provide a summary for the class of the trade structure and tariff policy for
a country that you have been assigned. The assignment of countries is alphabetical by your last
name in the list below:

Allen - Ferrer: Malawi

Gollobin-Keenan: Japan
Killion-Luessen: India
Luksik-Robinson: Brazil
Rothschild-Sidari: Russian Federation
Silver-Voss: China

The information on the country’s tariff rate is available from the WTO’s publication tariff
profiles, which is posted on Oak.
Some useful information on the country’s trade and income can be found here:

http://stat.wto.org/CountryProfile/WSDBCountryPFHome.aspx?Language=E

(To access the data, select your country and then click “Continue”)

Your summary should include answers to the following questions about the country you are
considering:

(a) What is the level of development of the country (per capita income), and how
important is trade?

(b) What is the main source of comparative advantage? (Eg. Importance of agricultural,
non-agricultural products in imports and exports. For this you may want to supplement with
other sources, either from WTO or on the web). How diversified is its trade?

(c) What fractions of its tariff rates are bound? How high are its applied MFN rates on
average? What sectors seem to receive the highest rate of protection?

(d) Who are the country’s primary trading partners? To what extent does geography seem
to play a significant role in determining its trading partners?

(e) How significant are the trade barriers that the country faces in its export markets?
Does the country have significant preferential trading arrangements?

What do you think would be this country’s primary goals in the next round of trade negotiations?

In addition to a written summary of tariff policy to be handed in at the beginning of class,

you should also be prepared to discuss what you have learned about this country’s trade
policy in class.