TY - BOOK AU - Froot,Kenneth A. ED - National Bureau of Economic Research. TI - Credibility, Real Interest Rates, and the Optimal Speed of Trade Liberalization T2 - NBER working paper series PY - 1987/// CY - Cambridge, Mass. PB - National Bureau of Economic Research N1 - August 1987; Hardcopy version available to institutional subscribers N2 - This paper investigates the effects of imperfectly credible trade liberalization programs on welfare and the allocation of real resources. We present a rational expectations model in which a government, with limited access to international financial markets may be forced to abort a liberalization program if hard-currency reserves are depleted too quickly. The liberalization's lack of perfect credibility arts as a distortion which becomes (rationally) intensified under the typical first-best policy of a direct move to free trade. A gradual lowering of trade barriers turns out to he welfare-superior to an immediate liberalization, and to improve the chance that. the program will ultimately succeed. We then derive the optimal speed of liberalization, the intertemporal allocation of resources, and the liberalization program's credibility UR - https://www.nber.org/papers/w2358 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.3386/w2358 ER -