Because trade liberalization which is anticipated to be temporary creates a
divergence betwen the fective domestic rate of interest and the world rate
of interest, tarif—reduction in the presence of international financial aset
trade may reduce welfare for asmal country. Calvo has argued that even
though the government intends to liberalize trade permanently, if the private
sector believes with some probabilty that atarif wil be imposed in the
future, then fre trade may not be optimal. This paper first formalizes this
argument and discuses the optimal policy for aqovernTrnt which seks to
maximize representative household welfare. The government's lack of
credibilty is represented by aset of beliefs the private sector holds about
the type of government it faces. Next, beliefs are ndcenized by alc,ring the
private sector to update thesi using Bayes' rule. In one aproach, the true
government's objective is maximize welfare for the conomy, so that it does not
sek to imitate another type, in contrast with other ecent medels of policy
credibilty. With learning, the government eventualy adopts fre trade, even
though restricted trade is optimal initaly