A World Trading System for Whom? Evidence from Global Tariffs
16 December 2025 5:45 pm CET
Arnaud Costinot (Professor of Economics and Associate Head at Massachusetts Institute of Technology at MIT) presents his research (jointly with Rodrigo Adão, John Sturm Becko, and Dave Donaldson) in the Vienna International Economics Seminar (VIES) series
In cooperation with CEU, FIW, Universität Wien, WIFO, WIIW and WU.
Venue
University of Vienna at the Faculty of Business, Economics and Statistics
Oskar-Morgenstern-Platz 1
1090 Vienna
Skylounge (12th floor)
Description
We use global tariffs to reveal the weights that nations implicitly place on the welfare of their trading partners relative to their own. Our estimated welfare weights suggest that formal and informal rules of the world trading system make countries internalize the impact of their policies onto others to a substantial extent, though not fully. On average, countries place 19% less value on transfers to foreigners than transfers to their own residents. Across nations, we find that countries that put more weights on the welfare of foreigners also tends to receive higher welfare weights from them. Ourresults are consistent with international cooperation being sustained by a general form of reciprocity among nations: cooperative behavior by one country, in the form of a higher welfare weight, is reciprocated with cooperative behavior by its partner, also in the form of a higher welfare weight. This is true both within and outside the World Trade Organization.
Speaker
Registration
Participants are requested to register in advance with Julia Hnidek
The VIES seminar is dedicated to frontier research in international economics and features presentations by renowned international scholars.
The VIES is a joint initiative of CEU, FIW, Universität Wien, WIFO, wiiw and WU.