doctoralThesis
Contrabando Técnico y Racionalidad Importadora en Colombia
Autor
Torres Gómez, Edwin Esteban
Institución
Resumen
Technical smuggling or Trade misinvoicing due to under-invoicing of imports represents a problem for the makers of public economic policy as it has perverse effects on issues such as finance, market competition, and informality. However, few empirical efforts have been made to study the incentives behind this illegal practice, both globally and for the Colombian case, and the existing literature focuses on analyzing the characteristics of the importing country, leaving aside the possible responsibility of the exporter, which is taken into consideration in this doctoral thesis. On the other hand, the signing of trade agreements can have adverse effects that change the incentives of third countries that are not granted tariff preferences. According to the approaches of Viner (1950), the trade preferences granted to a certain person through the signing of an FTA can generate trade diversions with third countries, which may imply changes in the behavior pattern of said trade partners in favor of to remain active as exporters to the signatory country. In this sense, a particularly interesting aspect arises that has not been addressed in the literature and is the possibility that a certain trade agreement generates changes in the behavior of under-invoicing of imports from third countries at a tariff disadvantage. In other words, an FTA can generate incentives to reduce technical smuggling from third countries, but also to increase it, as a strategy to stay in the market. This particular relationship is the focus of the discussion in the second article of this degree thesis. In addition, the Colombian import data showed a rather special behavior in recent years. In the period between 2001 and 2019, the countries with which Colombia does not have trade agreements have increased their participation in the total imported by the country, going from 20% to levels close to 45%. This particular trend seems to go against the Vinerian trade diversion positions and requires a theoretical and empirical analysis to determine the true effects in terms of trade diversion of the FTAs signed to date by Colombia, as well as to find the reasons for the aforementioned growing trend. 4 In accordance with the foregoing, this degree project is made up of three articles that focus on analyzing technical smuggling due to under-invoicing of imports and the import rationale in Colombia, especially within the framework of the signing of trade agreements in force at the time of the date.