Purpose Government procurement policies containing domestic content requirements have faced increasing attention, as more traditional forms of trade discrimination have declined in recent decades. The most important effort to reduce discriminatory government procurement policies is the plurilateral Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA), in which a subset of WTO countries has agreed to provide increased access to imports from fellow signatory countries. This paper focuses on the Buy American policy, which mandates domestic content for all US Federal government purchase above the micro-purchase level. The author tests whether steel imports from GPA and US Free Trade Agreement (FTA) partners, both of which receive preferential access to US federal procurements, increase as the value of federal construction contracts rise. Design/methodology/approach The author tracks federal construction contracts and seeks to determine whether there is a link between these contracts and construction grade steel imports from GPA and US FTA members. The author uses two-stage least squares to regress the import quantity of steel from GPA and US FTA countries on the value of US federal construction contracts. Imported and domestic steel prices as well as macroeconomic variables such as industrial production and non-residential construction are controlled for. A panel data set is used that includes three different construction-grade steel products and covers years 2004-2013. Findings The results indicate that increased federal construction contracts increase imports of construction-grade steel from GPA and FTA partners. This effect is relatively small, however, which may be due to the fact that federal construction is a small share of overall US construction. In general, the results suggest that the primary determinant of US import sourcing behavior is the business cycle as well as the price of steel. Nevertheless, the findings indicate that the preferences provided by the GPA and FTAs do have some impact on where US construction firms source their steel. Originality/value Previous research has studied the effect of the WTO’s GPA on foreign access to federal construction and other service contracts. This is the first study, however, to investigate whether these contracts impact the import sourcing behavior of the steel that is used in construction. Furthermore, while previous research measures the impact of GPA membership on the overall trade of goods and services, this paper is the first to link a particular industry with the inputs that are restricted by local content requirements such as the Buy American policy but freed up under the GPA. In general, previous research on the GPA has tried to capture the broad effect of GPA membership on trade, while this study focuses on the relationship between the GPA, federal procurement in a particular industry (construction) and import behavior of a key input, construction grade steel.

中文翻译：

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WTO政府采购协议是否会影响钢材进口？

目的随着近几十年来更传统的贸易歧视形式的减少，包含国内内容要求的政府采购政策受到越来越多的关注。减少歧视性政府采购政策的最重要努力是《多边政府采购协定》（GPA），其中一些世贸组织国家已同意提供更多的签署国进口产品。本文着重于“购买美国货”政策，该政策要求所有美国联邦政府在微型购买水平以上的购买都必须包含国内内容。作者测试了从GPA和美国自由贸易协定（FTA）伙伴那里获得的钢铁进口量是否随联邦建筑合同价值的增加而增加，这两个国家都可以优先获得美国联邦采购。设计/方法/方法作者跟踪联邦建筑合同，并试图确定这些合同与从GPA和美国FTA成员进口的建筑级钢材之间是否存在联系。作者使用两步最小二乘平方对美国联邦建筑合同价值从GPA和美国FTA国家的钢材进口量进行了回归。控制进口和国内钢价以及宏观经济变量，例如工业生产和非住宅建筑。使用的面板数据集包括三种不同的建筑级钢铁产品，涵盖2004-2013年。结果结果表明，增加的联邦建筑合同增加了GPA和FTA合作伙伴进口的建筑级钢材。但是，这种影响相对较小 这可能是由于联邦建筑在美国整体建筑中所占比例很小的事实。总体而言，结果表明，美国进口采购行为的主要决定因素是商业周期以及钢材价格。尽管如此，调查结果表明，GPA和FTA提供的优惠确实对美国建筑公司的钢材采购来源产生了一定影响。原创性/价值先前的研究已经研究了WTO的GPA对外国获得联邦建筑和其他服务合同的影响。但是，这是第一个研究这些合同是否影响建筑用钢材的进口采购行为的研究。此外，尽管先前的研究衡量了GPA成员资格对商品和服务总体贸易的影响，本文是第一个将特定行业与受本地内容要求（例如，购买美国政策）限制但根据GPA释放的投入相联系的文章。总的来说，以前的GPA研究试图捕获GPA成员资格对贸易的广泛影响，而本研究则侧重于GPA，特定行业（建筑）的联邦采购与关键投入，建筑的进口行为之间的关系。等级钢。