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This paper estimates the impact of aggregate fluctuations on the time-varying trade policies of 13 major emerging economies over 1989-2010. By 2010, these World Trade Organization member countries collectively accounted for 21 percent of world merchandise imports and 22 percent of world gross domestic product. The paper examines determinants of carefully constructed, bilateral measures of new import restrictions on products arising through the temporary trade barrier (TTB) policies of antidumping, safeguards, and countervailing duties. The approach explicitly addresses changes to the institutional environment facing these emerging economies as they joined the WTO and adopted disciplines to restrain their application of other trade policies, such as applied import tariffs. The paper presents evidence of a counter-cyclical relationship between macroeconomic shocks and new TTB import restrictions in addition to an important role for fluctuations in bilateral real exchange rates. Furthermore, for the subset of major Group of 20 emerging economies, the trade policy responsiveness coinciding with WTO establishment in 1995 suggests a significant change relative to the pre-WTO period; id est, new import restrictions became more counter-cyclical over time. Finally, the paper documents evidence on changes to some of these empirical relationships coinciding with the Great Recession.

Antidumping --- Business cycles --- Currencies and Exchange Rates --- Debt Markets --- Economic Theory & Research --- Emerging economies --- Emerging Markets --- Exchange rates --- Free Trade --- International Economics & Trade --- Safeguards --- Tariffs --- Temporary trade barriers --- WTO

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This research estimates the impact of macroeconomic fluctuations on import protection policies over 1988:Q1-2010:Q4 for the United States, European Union, and three other industrialized economies. First, estimates on a pre-Great Recession sample provide evidence of three key relationships for the US and EU. Increases in domestic unemployment rates and real appreciations in bilateral exchange rates led to substantial increases in antidumping and related forms of import protection. Furthermore, economies historically imposed these bilateral import restrictions on trading partners going through their own periods of weak economic growth. Second, estimates from the pre-Great Recession model predict a major trade policy response during 2008:Q4-2010:Q4, given the realized macroeconomic shocks. New US and EU trade barriers were projected to cover up to an additional 15 percentage points of nonoil imports, well above the baseline level of 2-3 percent of import coverage immediately preceding the crisis. Third, re-estimating the model on data from the Great Recession period illustrates why the realized trade policy response differed from model predictions based on historical data. While exchange rate movements played an important role in limiting new import protection, the US and EU also "switched" from their historical behavior during the Great Recession and shifted new import protection toward trading partners experiencing economic growth and away from those that were contracting.

Antidumping --- Currencies and Exchange Rates --- Economic Theory & Research --- Free Trade --- International Economics & Trade --- Safeguards --- Temporary trade barriers --- Trade Law --- Trade Policy --- Australia --- Canada --- South Korea --- US

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Do preferential trade agreements (PTAs) lead to greater market integration, more intense competition and less market power for firms? This paper integrates the detailed data on 257 preferential trade agreements from the World Bank's Deep Trade Agreements (DTA) database with administrative customs datasets of product-level exports by firms from thirteen developing and emerging countries to estimate the responsiveness of firm-level exports, export prices, and destination-specific markups to trade and domestic policy commitments enshrined in deep trade agreements. The findings suggest that both the direct and indirect effects of deep trade agreement provisions on export sales are quantitatively significant. Perhaps more interestingly, the finding of a suggestive evidence of a pro-competitive effect of PTAs.

Competition Policy --- Competitiveness and Competition Policy --- Deep Trade Agreement --- Export Competitiveness --- Firm Level Data --- Gravity Model --- International Economics and Trade --- Markup Elasticity --- Mutual Recognition --- Private Sector Development --- Rules of Origin --- Trade and Services --- Trade Elasticity --- Trade Policy

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This paper estimates the impact of aggregate fluctuations on the time-varying trade policies of 13 major emerging economies over 1989-2010. By 2010, these World Trade Organization member countries collectively accounted for 21 percent of world merchandise imports and 22 percent of world gross domestic product. The paper examines determinants of carefully constructed, bilateral measures of new import restrictions on products arising through the temporary trade barrier (TTB) policies of antidumping, safeguards, and countervailing duties. The approach explicitly addresses changes to the institutional environment facing these emerging economies as they joined the WTO and adopted disciplines to restrain their application of other trade policies, such as applied import tariffs. The paper presents evidence of a counter-cyclical relationship between macroeconomic shocks and new TTB import restrictions in addition to an important role for fluctuations in bilateral real exchange rates. Furthermore, for the subset of major Group of 20 emerging economies, the trade policy responsiveness coinciding with WTO establishment in 1995 suggests a significant change relative to the pre-WTO period; id est, new import restrictions became more counter-cyclical over time. Finally, the paper documents evidence on changes to some of these empirical relationships coinciding with the Great Recession.

Antidumping --- Business cycles --- Currencies and Exchange Rates --- Debt Markets --- Economic Theory & Research --- Emerging economies --- Emerging Markets --- Exchange rates --- Free Trade --- International Economics & Trade --- Safeguards --- Tariffs --- Temporary trade barriers --- WTO

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This paper estimates a model of a government making trade policy adjustments under a self-enforcing trade agreement in the presence of economic shocks. The empirical model is motivated by the formal theories of cooperative trade agreements. The authors find evidence that United States' use of its antidumping policy during 1997-2006 is consistent with increases in time-varying "cooperative" tariffs, where the likelihood of antidumping is increasing in the size of unexpected import surges, decreasing in the volatility of imports, and decreasing in the elasticities of import demand and export supply. The analysis finds additional support for the theory that some US antidumping use is consistent with cooperative behavior through a second empirical examination of how trading partners responded to these new US tariffs. Even after controlling for factors such as the expected cost and benefit to filing a WTO dispute or engaging in antidumping retaliation, the analysis find that trading partners are less likely to challenge such "cooperative" US antidumping tariffs that were imposed under terms-of-trade pressure suggested by the theory.

Antidumping --- Antidumping duties --- Antidumping policies --- Antidumping policy --- Bilateral trade --- Currencies and Exchange Rates --- Domestic industries --- Economic Theory & Research --- Export supply --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Free Trade --- International Economics and Trade --- International Trade and Trade Rules --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Market access --- Tariff reduction --- Terms of trade --- Trade agreement --- Trade agreements --- Trade barriers --- Trade effect --- Trade flows --- Trade motives --- Trade policies --- Trade Policy --- World trade --- World trade organization