Adjustment costs and gradual trade liberalization

This paper analyzes dynamic bilateral trade liberalization between two large countries. Trade liberalization causes the importable sector of each country to shrink and thereby causes reallocation of labor between sectors. Assuming that each moving worker must pay a fixed adjustment cost, a country has to bear a total adjustment cost which is linear in the amount of moving workers. We derive the most-cooperative, self-enforcing trade liberalization path, and find that in general trade liberalization is gradual. We also find that trade adjustment assistance that compensates workers for relocation out of the protected sector will accelerate the pace of trade liberalization. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. JEL classification: F13 (International Trade); C73 (Dynamic Games).