Empirical Assessment of Welfare Improvements in Japan by Trade Liberalization

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26380354
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Economic policy
• Research Institution: Gakushuin University (2016-2017); Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization (2014-2015)
• Principal Investigator: Ito Tadashi 学習院大学, 国際社会科学部, 教授 (40550413)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): 松浦 寿幸 慶應義塾大学, 産業研究所(三田), 准教授 (20456304)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: 貿易自由化 / 厚生効果 / 日本

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Although the welfare impact of trade liberalisation has been a main topic of international trade literature, it is only recently that the empirical estimation became feasible thanks to the availability of large and detailed datasets and the inventions of new techniques to estimate the welfare impact even under some constraints on the data availability. In the post-war era, Japan pursued trade liberalisation through multilateral and bilateral negotiations. This research project showed the welfare impact of Japan’s trade liberalisation in numbers. More specifically, it showed that in the period of the year 1970 to the year 2011, trade liberalisation of the agricultural sector of Japan had a welfare impact of 5 to 15 percentage points vis-a-vis the autarky situation, whereas that of manufacturing sector had an increasing welfare impact from 1990s and reached to about 11 percentage points in the year 2011.

Free Research Field

国際経済学、経済政策