Why Don't Foreign Firms Cooperate in Antidumping Investigations?: An Empirical Analysis

Abstract

Foreign firms face punitive antidumping duties if they do not cooperate with the US Department of Commerce (DOC). For example, 37% of all foreign firms involved in antidumping investigations in the US chose faced "facts available" margins for the 1995-2002 period, with average antidumping duties of 31% for cooperating foreign firms, compared to 87% for those who do not. The existing literature has focused on how DOC discretion has led to foreign firm non-cooperation. This paper instead examines individual foreign firm's decisions about whether to cooperate during this same period. We find evidence that non-cooperation is consistent with a model of foreign firms rationally choosing not to cooperate, rather than simply a result of investigating authority bias against imports.

Keywords: antidumping, commercial policy, trade policy, facts available

JEL Classification: F1, F13