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Abstract
Excerpts: This paper has two goals. The first is to provide an up-to-date discussion of trends and tariff policy issues in world biofuel markets. This discussion helps set the stage and provides context for the second goal, which is to provide quantitative estimates of the economic impacts of US import tariffs and antidumping duties applied in ethanol and biodiesel markets. The main innovation in our approach compared to past research is that we use a structural econometric model rather than a simulation model calibrated to a single data point. We also investigate biodiesel tariffs in addition to ethanol, and find that biodiesel tariffs now have more significant effects than the ethanol tariff. We have not been able to find any previous research that provides estimates of the economic effects of biodiesel tariffs. The estimates in our paper are also based on more, and more recent, data than those from previous research. This allows us to provide some new perspectives on the economic impacts of US biofuel tariffs. Three main outcomes from tariff policy are investigated: (1) impacts on production and consumption levels in the US and other major biofuel countries; (2) impacts on trade flows between countries; and (3) impacts on US and world biofuel prices