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Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago

Emerging Economies, Trade Policy,
and Macroeconomic Shocks
Chad P. Bown and Meredith A. Crowley

REVISED
March 2014
WP 2012-18

Emerging Economies, Trade Policy, and Macroeconomic Shocks
Chad P. Bown†
The World Bank and CEPR

Meredith A. Crowley‡
University of Cambridge

This version: March 2014
Abstract
This paper estimates the impact of aggregate fluctuations on the time-varying trade
policies of thirteen major emerging economies over 1989-2010; by 2010, these WTO
member countries collectively accounted for 21 percent of world merchandise imports
and 22 percent of world GDP. We examine 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. We
find evidence of a counter-cyclical relationship between macroeconomic shocks and new
TTB import restrictions as well as an important role for fluctuations in bilateral real
exchange rates. Furthermore, the trade policy responsiveness coinciding with WTO
establishment in 1995 suggests a significant change relative to the pre-WTO period; i.e.,
new import restrictions became more counter-cyclical and sensitive to real exchange
rate shocks over time. Finally, we also present results that explicitly address 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.

JEL No. F13
Keywords: antidumping, safeguards, temporary trade barriers, emerging economies, tariffs, WTO, business
cycles, exchange rates

________________
†

Bown: Development Research Group, Trade and International Integration (DECTI); The World Bank, 1818 H
Street, NW, MSN MC3-303, Washington, DC 20433 USA. tel: +1.202.473.9588, fax: +1.202.522.1159, email:
cbown@worldbank.org, web: https://sites.google.com/site/chadpbown/.
‡

Crowley: Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge, Austin Robinson Building, Sidgwick Avenue,
Cambridge, CB3 9DD United Kingdom. tel: +44.1223.335261, email: crowley.meredith@gmail.com, web:
http://meredithcrowley.weebly.com/ .
Thanks for useful discussions to Robert Staiger, Douglas Irwin, Giovanni Maggi, Shang-Jin Wei, Aaditya Mattoo,
Rachel McCulloch, Kyle Handley, Russell Hillberry, David Tarr, Daniel Dias, participants at the Tsinghua-Columbia
Conference in Beijing, the EIIT Conference at UC-Santa Cruz, and seminars at Yale, Dartmouth, Michigan,
Syracuse, Georgia Tech, FIU, the World Bank, and Chicago Fed. Aksel Erbahar, Carys Golesworthy, Chrissy
Ostrowski, and Jake Fabina provided outstanding research assistance. Any opinions expressed in this paper are
the authors’ and should not be attributed to the World Bank. All remaining errors are our own.

0

1

Introduction

Why do countries sign trade agreements that restrict their use of import tariffs? A series of
theoretical models dating back to Staiger and Tabellini (1987) and, more recently, Maggi and
Rodriguez-Clare (1998, 2007), suggest that a trade agreement can serve as a commitment device for
governments that seek to enact a more liberal trade regime but which are plagued by timeconsistency problems. This theory is thought to be particularly relevant for many emerging
economies, as these countries may not be sufficiently “large” in world markets so as to motivate use
of trade agreements for the standard terms-of-trade reasons (Bagwell and Staiger, 1999).1
Despite the strong theoretical predictions of the commitment literature, there is only limited
empirical evidence on the explicit channels through which trade agreements facilitate different
economic outcomes, let alone changes in policymaking behavior that might be associated with trade
agreement commitments. Tang and Wei (2009) provide indirect support by using a difference-indifference approach to examine how trade and other reform commitments impact GDP growth and
the aggregate investment to GDP ratio. Their finding that countries required to undertake more
serious trade reform efforts in order to join the WTO enjoyed better economic outcomes is consistent
with evidence that the WTO can help the time-consistency problem in tariff setting. Similarly,
Subramanian and Wei (2007) have identified certain channels through which active participation in
the multilateral trading regime has promoted trade growth. Their results challenge earlier studies
such as Rose (2004) which finds little increased trade growth associated with the GATT/WTO system
on average across countries.
The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate how a number of major emerging
economies conducted their trade policy over 1989-2010 and, in particular, how the conduct of their
trade policy changed by taking on commitments when joining the WTO in 1995. First, as we describe
in further detail below, these economies exhibit variation in trade policy commitments across at least
two important dimensions – (1) there is considerable cross-country variation in the share of products
with any maximum tariff rate commitment, and (2) there is substantial cross-country variation in the
simple average tariff rate over all products with any established maximum binding rate. Second, we
describe how these economies have partially unwound their tariff commitments by resorting to a set
1

Such countries may seek trade agreements for other reasons if, because they are “small” in world markets,
they are not necessarily seeking partners against which to reciprocally neutralize the price impact of tariff cuts
and coordinate policy changes so as to move jointly from the terms-of-trade driven prisoner’s dilemma
outcome.

1

of potentially WTO-consistent policies that permit the imposition of “temporary” trade barriers if
specific economic and legal criteria are met. Our results paint a complex picture of the nature of trade
policy commitments that emerging economies have taken on during this period under the WTO. On
one hand, the use of temporary trade barrier policies of antidumping, safeguards, and countervailing
duties may signal evidence of these countries’ commitment to the WTO’s principles of transparency
and stability in trade policy determination. On the other hand, the increasing use of such import
restrictions may also signal a step back from the more fully liberal regime that they promised to
employ by lowering and binding their more general applied most-favored-nation (MFN) import tariffs.
Our particular approach is to examine the responsiveness of time-varying import protection
to macroeconomic shocks for thirteen major emerging economies covering 1989-2010. We
specifically investigate the imposition of new import protection through temporary trade barriers
(TTBs) by constructing measures of import protection built up from disaggregated, product-level data.
The emerging economies in our analysis are increasingly important contributors to the global
economy; cumulatively by 2010, they combined to account for 21 percent of world merchandise
imports and 22 percent of world GDP.2 Furthermore, the economic relevance of emerging economies’
application of TTBs in particular is increasingly apparent. Bown (2012a) documents that for the major
Group of 20 (G20) emerging economies, the collective share of import products subject to TTB import
restrictions increased more than 50 percent between 2007 and 2010 alone. 3 Finally, Bown (2011)
finds that many of the G20 emerging economies also in our sample – including Argentina, Brazil,
China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa, and Turkey – have used TTBs over 1990-2009 in ways
that rival the intensity (product coverage) and frequency (number of policies imposed and removed)
of high income economies like the United States and European Union.4

2

As we explain in more detail below, our sample only includes major users of these TTB policies of import
protection. Our econometric approach exploits country-level fixed effects which themselves would capture nonuse by the countries omitted from our analysis if included.
3

See Bown (2012a, Table A1a) which updates the data originally presented as Table 3 of Bown (2011) through
2011. Note that Mexico, Russia and Saudi Arabia are omitted from the G20 emerging economy sample for these
statistics, though Mexico is included in the estimation sample described below.
4

A major difference, of course, is that the US and EU have a much longer history of accepting external
enforcement of their trade policy commitments through the multilateral institutions, more binding trade policy
commitments, and an experience with TTBs that dates back to at least the 1960s. The extensive research
literature examining determinants of TTBs by high income economies is surveyed by Blonigen and Prusa (2003).

2

We begin our econometric investigation by documenting a general counter-cyclical
relationship between macroeconomic growth and import protection for the period covering the
inception of the WTO in 1995 through 2010. For these emerging economies, a decrease in domestic
real GDP growth or an increase in the domestic unemployment rate leads to significantly more
imported products subject to TTBs in the subsequent year. Furthermore, real appreciation of the
bilateral exchange rate relative to a trading partner is also associated with subsequently more import
restrictions, as is weak foreign GDP growth in a trading partner. The relationships for these emerging
economies during this particular period are similar to those found in a sample of five high-income
economies over the longer period of 1989-2010 (Bown and Crowley, 2013a).5 Nevertheless, these
new results are particularly important in light of recent evidence from Rose (2013), which examines a
number of other trade policy instruments (and a longer time series of data) and concludes that there
has been a secular decline in the sensitivity of import protection across countries.6 Rose’s paper
concludes that protectionism is no longer counter-cyclical; however, it does not specifically address
the manner by which countries have engaged in inter-temporal substitution of trade policy away from
applied import tariffs and toward instruments such as temporary trade barriers.
The second half of our empirical analysis explicitly addresses the potential for trade policy
substitution over time across instruments, and it also examines the role played by tariff commitments
under the WTO beginning in 1995. Our formal approach is to extend our data sample back to 1989
and to compare how these emerging economies conducted their trade policies under both the GATT
(pre-1995) and WTO (1995 onwards) regimes. We provide evidence that the increased responsiveness
of TTBs to macroeconomic fluctuations after 1995 represents a significant departure from how the
major emerging economies used these trade policy instruments before 1995, suggesting an
5

Bown and Crowley (2013a) examines data from the United States, European Union, Australia, Canada, and
South Korea and is most closely related to a prior literature examining antidumping use by the United States and
a handful of other high income countries on data from the 1980s and 1990s, including Knetter and Prusa (2003)
and Feinberg (1989). One substantial difference is that while the current paper relies on the best available data
across countries at the annual frequency, Bown and Crowley (2013a) was able to access data for high-income
economies at the quarterly frequency. Another related paper is Crowley (2011), which is the first that we are
aware of that highlights the channel of policy-imposing economies using country-specific bilateral import
restrictions against trading partners that were experiencing negative growth shocks at home. Bown (2008)
presents an approach that considers macroeconomic and industry-level determinants of antidumping for a
number of the emerging economies in our sample for the period 1995-2002.
6

The evolving literature on import protection taking place during the Great Recession also includes Bussiere,
Perez-Barreiro, Straub and Taglioni (2010), Kee, Neagu and Nicita (2013), Gawande, Hoekman, and Cue (2014),
and Davis and Pelc (2012), in addition to Bown (2011).

3

institutional impact of the WTO. These results are robust to controlling for inter-temporal changes to
WTO discipline over a country’s other trade policies, such as its applied MFN tariffs.
In particular, we find that emerging economies implement TTB import protection during
periods when a greater number of their imported products have become subject to the WTO
disciplines that constrain a country’s ability to raise applied MFN tariff rates.7 Our empirical approach
directly addresses the issue that emerging economy aggregate-level demand for TTBs might vary
across countries and over time due to variation in the stringency of WTO discipline over their other
trade policies. As we further describe below, this arises due to two important institutional differences
between how high-income and emerging economies conducted their trade policy during this period.
First consider applied import tariff levels. For any given year, most of the emerging economies in our
sample had applied import tariffs that made them much less open to trade relative to high income
economies – e.g., those studied in Bown and Crowley (2013a). Furthermore, many of these emerging
economies also had lower applied tariffs in 2010 than at the beginning of the period. Second,
emerging economies differ from high income countries in that most retained some freedom to make
WTO-consistent increases to their applied MFN import tariffs. Our approach specifically controls for
the time variation within and across countries in the extent to which WTO disciplines constrain an
economy’s discretion to change its applied tariff rates.
This evidence in particular, regarding the empirical relevance of the WTO and the role of
economic incentives for trade policy formation in emerging economies, is consistent with results from
an evolving literature that examines the extent to which economic incentives and economic shocks
affect the trade policies of emerging economies, especially in light of these countries’ increasing
engagement in the rules-based multilateral trading system. Recent evidence from emerging
economies documenting the importance of economic determinants of trade policy formation pushes
beyond traditionally political motives such as income redistribution or lobbying. Broda, Limão, and
Weinstein (2008), for example, find that economic incentives affect non-cooperative tariff levels prior
to a country’s WTO accession; their sample includes a number of emerging economies. Bagwell and
Staiger (2011) similarly provide evidence that economic channels affect tariff reductions associated
7

This cross-country evidence on the substitutability between applied MFN tariffs and use of TTBs is consistent
with the micro-level results for India provided in Bown and Tovar (2011). That approach estimates a Grossman
and Helpman (1994) model at the product level on repeated cross sections of data over 1990-2002 and
concludes that many of India’s cuts to its applied import tariffs resulting from its unilateral liberalization of the
1990s were subsequently unwound through the implementation of new TTBs such as antidumping and
safeguards.

4

with WTO accession negotiations. Our findings on TTBs also relate to a separate study on TTB use by
the United States, in which Bown and Crowley (2013b) provide evidence that economic incentives at
the sector level shape antidumping and safeguard use and thus US participation in cooperative, selfenforcing trade agreements such as the WTO, an idea first formalized theoretically by Bagwell and
Staiger (1990).
The rest of the paper proceeds as follows. Section 2 summarizes the theoretical work
regarding macroeconomic shocks and new import protection, and it characterizes the institutional
environment facing emerging economies’ trade policies under the WTO during 1995-2010. Section 3
introduces our empirical model and describes our panel dataset. Section 4 presents our baseline
results regarding the relationship between macroeconomic fluctuations and new import restrictions
for emerging economies under the WTO covering the years 1995-2010. In Section 5, we extend the
data set back to 1989 where possible and compare emerging economy TTB use under the WTO
relative to the prior GATT regime. Finally, Section 6 concludes.

2

Theory, Institutional Environment, Empirical Model, and Data

2.1 Theory
An extensive empirical literature documents evidence of counter-cyclical trade policy in industrialized
economies. Nevertheless, there are relatively few theoretical contributions that explicitly model the
channels through which such import protection arises.8 Political economy models face two empirical
difficulties: first, changes in political parameters do not necessarily match the speed of economic
fluctuations; second, there is little evidence that the government’s preference for the welfare of
import-competing sectors relative to consumers or export-oriented sectors rises during recessions.
Greater success in matching some of the stylized facts on time-varying trade restrictions
comes from terms-of-trade-driven models of import protection. Consider first the approach of
Bagwell and Staiger (1990); they present a dynamic, repeated-game model of the trade policy choices
of two large countries that participate in a trade agreement. While global welfare is higher in such a
framework when countries pursue a cooperative agreement that involves more liberal trade,
8

See the extensive list of empirical research referenced in Bagwell and Staiger (2003), Rose (2013), and Bown
and Crowley (2013a) for historical evidence. Irwin (2011, 2012) provides a recent analysis of the channels
through which the shocks of the Great Depression are associated with the counter-cyclical increases in import
protection of the 1930s.

5

unexpected increases to trade volumes result in the incentive to increase tariffs in order to take
advantage of static (one-period) welfare gains. In the face of trade volume shocks, cooperative trade
policy in a self-enforcing trade agreement can therefore be characterized by periods in which trade
barriers increase. In a related dynamic modeling framework, Bagwell and Staiger (2003) extend this
basic approach by considering serially correlated shocks to growth in order to examine the
relationship between other aggregate-level fluctuations and import protection.9 Counter-cyclical
trade policy can arise in this environment because the terms-of-trade gain from a tariff increase –
which is a response to a transitory increase in import volume – can exceed the long-run cost of a trade
war in a persistent recession during which future growth is expected to be slow. This model
generates some of the key empirical predictions that we take to the data: new import barriers are
expected to arise when aggregate growth is weak at home and aggregate growth is weak in an
important foreign source of imports.10

2.2 The WTO, discipline over applied tariffs, and emerging economy trade policy formation
Our investigation of the cyclicality of import protection for emerging economies covers 1989-2010,
which is an important period of change in the institutional environment for the conduct of trade
policy. However, we begin our empirical analysis with the post-1995 period during which the
establishment of the WTO instituted a common set of international rules governing the application of
TTB policies. Nevertheless, even when focusing on this particular period, there are important crosscountry differences that likely influence emerging economy application of TTBs. First, a number of
these economies undertook substantial trade liberalization and made economically meaningful cuts
to their applied MFN import tariffs that were unilateral in the sense that they were not required by
the WTO. Second, a number of countries accepted WTO discipline over their tariff and other trade
policies for the first time. These disciplines define maximum tariff rates at the product level that

9

More formally, the Bagwell and Staiger (2003) set-up assumes two countries that trade many products with
the aggregate growth rate in each country modeled as the rate of new product entry. A Markov-switching
process moves the international economy from phases of high growth to low growth. Importantly, in each
phase, trade volumes are subject to transitory shocks so that temporarily high import volumes can be observed
during recessionary periods.
10

Crowley (2010) generates a similar prediction for the channel of weak trading partner growth by using a
segmented markets model to show that antidumping import restrictions increase in response to weak foreign
growth at the sector level.

6

countries promise not to exceed except through the use of WTO-permissible exceptions such as
temporary trade barrier policies of antidumping, safeguards, and countervailing duties. Nevertheless,
the binding nature of these disciplines may vary both across countries and within countries over time
during this period, and any examination of the macroeconomic forces driving emerging economy
trade policy must control for such variation.
Consider the data on different trade policy instruments in Table 1. The scope of a country’s
tariff commitments under the WTO is most easily summarized through three measures – the share of
the country’s total imported products at the 6-digit Harmonized System (HS-06) level that have a
maximum tariff rate commitment, i.e., that are ``legally bound’’ (column 1), the simple average of the
rates at which these tariffs are bound (column 2), and the difference between this legal binding tariff
rate and the MFN applied tariff rate that the country implements over imports at the border (column
2 less column 3 or 4). Table 1 indicates that, for these three measures, there is substantial
heterogeneity across the thirteen emerging economies in our sample. The differential between the
average applied MFN tariff rates in 1995 and 2010 (columns 3 and 4) also indicates variation within
some of these countries over time; for some emerging economies, average applied MFN tariffs in
2010 were higher than they were in 1995, while they are significantly lower in other economies.
Variation in applied tariff rates over the period suggests that an emerging economy’s
aggregate-level demand for tariffs under the WTO’s TTB policies may change over time. When a
country’s tariff commitments bind or almost bind, i.e. for imported products with applied MFN tariff
rates that are at or close to the WTO maximum binding rate, then the only WTO-permitted option to
implement additional import protection for that product is through a TTB. Columns (5) and (6) report
data from Bown (2012a) on the stock of temporary tariff barriers as a share of all imported products
in 1995 and in 2010, respectively. A comparison of the data in these two columns indicates that there
is considerable differentiation both across countries, as well as within countries over time, as to the
economic importance of the import coverage of these TTB policies.
The complex interplay of broad trade liberalization commitments (as captured by WTO tariff
bindings and applied tariff rates) and the potential unwinding of these commitments is summarized in
the last three columns of Table 1. These columns provide two cuts of the data from imported
products at the HS-06 level. For these three columns, we define an HS-06 product as “under WTO
discipline” if it has an applied import tariff that is within 10 percentage points of its legally binding
rate at the WTO; i.e., these are products for which governments have relatively little scope to further

7

increase their applied import tariffs.11 In other words, these are products with binding trade policy
commitments.
Column (8) of Table 1 presents, by country, the average over 1995-2010 of the share of all new
TTBs per year for products that are “under WTO discipline.” For Argentina, 18.3 percent of the
products over which it had used TTBs during 1995-2010 had applied tariffs that were within 10
percentage points of the legal binding. The first implication of this column is that there is considerable
variation across countries. China, South Africa and India use TTBs in products for which their ability to
raise applied rates is largely constrained. On the other hand, smaller economies, such as Colombia
and Thailand, impose TTBs on products for which there is considerable scope – i.e., more than 10
percentage points for 100 percent of them – for applied tariff increases.
The last two columns examine the relationship between WTO discipline over applied tariff rates
and new TTBs. For most countries in our sample, product categories that are under tight WTO
discipline in year t-1 are more likely to face new TTBs in year t. For column (9) we construct the set of
all TTBs that (1) did not have a TTB in place in year t-1 and that (2) faced a TTB in year t. We then
calculate the fraction of these products that were under WTO discipline in year t. The reported
statistic is the average of this fraction from 1995-2010. For column (10) we construct the set of
products with (1) no TTB in place at time t-1 and (2) no TTB in place in year t. We then calculate the
share of products in this set that were under WTO discipline in year t. The columns reveal that
products that were under WTO discipline in year t-1 were more likely to face additional restrictions on
imports in the following year. Again consider Argentina: a comparison of the data in columns (9) and
(10) indicate that 20.2 percent of its products with new TTBs were constrained by WTO disciplines,
whereas only 15.3 percent of TTB-unaffected products were constrained by WTO disciplines. With the
exception of Turkey, this pattern is common across the G20 emerging economies; i.e., WTO disciplines
which constrain other trade policy choices lead to disproportionately more new TTBs.

11

For this exercise we consider 10 percentage points as opposed to, say, the applied tariff and binding rate
being exactly equivalent; in the formal econometric analysis below we consider a number of different
definitions. One motivation for using a slightly larger (10 percentage point) cutoff is given by the data on the size
of TTBs applied as tariffs. Antidumping, for example, is frequently imposed as a new import duty at ad valorem
rates of over 100 percent (Bown, 2012b). In practical terms, it may be costly for a government to change any
tariff rate and thus it may only be willing to do so through the applied tariff rate at the border if it can raise its
tariff legally by, say, at least 10 percentage points; if not, it may choose a different policy instrument such as a
TTB where the upper limit is less constrained.

8

This latter information in Table 1, regarding the relationship between TTBs and WTO
commitments over applied tariffs, motivates our construction of an aggregate, time-varying indicator
that we employ in the second half of our formal econometric analysis described below. We seek to
capture the binding nature of the WTO disciplines over a country’s tariffs; we therefore begin by
focusing on the share of a country’s products with applied tariff rates equal to the WTO legal binding.
We then take annual differences of this variable, and we expect a positive relationship between it and
the aggregate-level demand for new import protection through TTBs; i.e., an increase in the share of
the country’s imported products that have applied tariffs equal to their legal binding rates would be
associated with increased demand for TTBs the following year, ceteris paribus.
Figure 1 plots the year-to-year change in the share of each country’s products with applied
tariff rates equal to the WTO legal binding for the period 1996-2010. There is evidence of substantial
variation – both over time and across countries – as to how constrained these emerging economies
are by WTO disciplines over their applied import tariff policies. Argentina, India, Malaysia, Philippines
and Thailand, for example, each have years for which there are major changes in the share of
products falling under (or out of) WTO discipline. Given this anecdotal evidence of cross-country and
inter-temporal variation in the binding nature of WTO disciplines over tariff policy for emerging
economies, we explicitly control for the changing policy environment in our formal econometric
analysis. We explore, for example, whether countries that are in a period with applied tariffs that are
well below their legal bindings may be less likely to need to use TTB policies of import protection
perhaps because they can raise their applied tariffs in response to shocks.
We conclude this section by noting that the environment characterized by Table 1 and Figure
1 for these emerging economies is quite distinct from that facing most of the high income economies
studied in Bown and Crowley (2013a). For example, both the United States and European Union have
bound 100 percent of their tariff lines under the WTO, and they have relatively low average bound
tariff rates, at 3.6 percent and 4.2 percent, respectively. Furthermore, average applied MFN tariff
rates for the US and EU are almost identical to their tariff bindings and they exhibit little time
variation; i.e., these economies have little scope to raise applied MFN tariffs in response to economic
shocks without violating WTO disciplines, and this is relatively time-invariant for 1995-2010.

9

3. Empirical model
This section presents an empirical model of the aggregate-level determinants of import protection
through the number of products that a government subjects to new temporary trade barrier
investigations. The model relates the number of products under an antidumping, global safeguard,
China safeguard, or countervailing duty investigation in a given year to the first lag of a number of
macroeconomic variables.12 The general approach follows Bown and Crowley (2013a); we elaborate
on the critical similarities and differences in more detail in the next section.
The dependent variable is the number of products imported from country i against which the
importing economy j initiates a temporary trade barrier investigation in year t that subsequently
results in a new import restriction. This measure is a non-negative count and exhibits over-dispersion
in that the variance of the number of investigations per time period exceeds the mean (see Table 2).
We focus on products subject to investigations that ultimately result in the imposition of new import
restrictions, though we do confirm the robustness of our results to other definitions.13 Unless
expressly stated otherwise, in what follows we use temporary trade barriers and import protection
interchangeably.
We formally model temporary trade barrier formation as generated by a negative binomial
distribution (Hausman, Hall, and Griliches, 1984). In this model, the number of imported products
under temporary trade barrier import protection, yijt, follows a Poisson process after conditioning on
the explanatory variables, xijt, and unobserved heterogeneity, uijt>0. Specifically,

y ijt | xijt , uijt ~ Poisson(uijtm(x ijt , β)) , where uijt ~ gamma(1, α) .

Thus, the distribution of counts of products subject to new temporary trade barriers, yijt , given xijt
follows a negative binomial with conditional mean and variance

E(y ijt | x ijt ) = m(x ijt , β) = exp(x ijtβ) and Var(y ijt | x ijt ) = exp(x ijtβ) + (α exp(x ijtβ))2 .
12

Knetter and Prusa (2003) introduced the use of a negative binomial model to estimate the responsiveness of
trade policy to aggregate growth in their study of antidumping filings by four industrialized economies.
13

The qualitative nature of our results is robust to a redefinition of the dependent variable to be products
subject to TTB investigations, including even those do not ultimately conclude with the imposition of trade
barriers. This may be important given the Staiger and Wolak (1994) evidence for the United States, for example,
that even a mere TTB investigation can have trade-destroying effects.

10

We use maximum likelihood to estimate the relationship between the number of products from
country i that economy j subjects to policy investigations and import protection in year t as a function
of the lag (year t-1) of the percent change in the bilateral real exchange rate, domestic and trading
partner i real GDP growth, and bilateral import growth. The model is identified off inter-temporal
variation in domestic real GDP growth and off inter-temporal and cross-sectional variation in bilateral
real exchange rates, foreign trading partner real GDP growth, and bilateral import growth.
In interpreting the coefficient estimates from this model, we report incidence rate ratios
(IRRs) for the explanatory variables. That is, we report the ratio of counts predicted by the model
when the lag of an explanatory variable of interest is one unit above its mean value (and all other
variables are at their means) to the counts predicted when all variables are at their means. To better
quantify the results of our model, we also frequently present information on the percent change in
the predicted counts of imported products becoming subject to new TTBs that our model generates in
response to one standard deviation shocks to each of the explanatory variables of interest.

3.1 Data and Variable Construction
There are a number of similarities and differences in our data and modeling approach relative to our
companion paper’s (Bown and Crowley, 2013a) estimates on high income economies that require
explicit clarification and justification.
Begin with the similarities. Like Bown and Crowley (2013a), we improve upon the prior
literature through how we measure TTB import protection. We construct an annual time series of
bilateral trade policy actions based on the universally-defined, 6-digit Harmonized System (HS-06)
product level. The data for each policy-imposing economy begins either in 1989 or as soon as the
country had TTB laws in place and available data on its use of TTBs (see Table 1, column 7). The data
derive from extremely detailed trade policy information found in the World Bank’s Temporary Trade
Barriers Database (Bown, 2012b). Our measure of import protection is comprised of four arguably
substitutable temporary trade barrier policies – antidumping, global safeguards, China-specific
safeguards, and countervailing duties. Thus the dependent variable in our analysis is the count of HS06 imported products on which the government has agreed to initiate a new temporary trade barrier
investigation against trading partner i in year t that results in import protection and against which
there is not already an existing TTB in place. This count variable is carefully constructed for each

11

policy-imposing country by trading partner and by year in a conservative way that does not allow for
redundancy.14 In robustness checks, we also construct this variable using the antidumping policy
alone and using all (non-redundant) TTB investigations, even those that did not result in the
imposition of new import restrictions.
A second innovation relative to the prior literature is emphasis on a number of bilaterallydefined explanatory variables which enable us to focus on relationships between a policy-imposing
economy and its key trading partners.15 This is empirically relevant for two reasons. First, the
temporary trade barriers under study can be imposed bilaterally so as to discriminate across import
sources. Second, two of the key macroeconomic determinants of import protection in our model trading partner i’s real GDP growth and the bilateral real exchange rate - vary bilaterally. Our dataset
with bilateral variation also allows us to examine if countries apply import protection against trading
partners facing their own economic shocks.
There are three main differences in variable construction relative to the approach adopted in
Bown and Crowley (2013a). The first distinction is this paper’s use of data at the annual frequency, a
limitation that the companion paper is able to overcome because data at the quarterly frequency is
available for only a smaller set of high income economies. Second, due to data limitations for a
number of emerging economies, we generally use domestic real GDP growth to capture the slowdown
of the economy, whereas the companion paper used either the change in domestic unemployment
rate or real GDP growth. The unemployment rate data series is not sufficiently available for all of the
emerging economies in our analysis to use in the baseline estimates; however, we do employ it where

14

At any point in time in the sample period under the Harmonized System, there are roughly 5000 HS-06
imported products that could be imported from any particular trading partner. In terms of policy, governments
impose these import restrictions at the 8- or 10-digit product level; unfortunately the HS-06 level is the most
finely disaggregated level of data that is comparable across countries. First, so as to avoid double counting in
cases in which new import protection at the 8-digit level falls into the same HS-06 category as a previously
imposed measure, we do not include such products. Second, for the more expansive import protection measure
covering all four policies, we also do not include products that were subject to a simultaneous or previously
imposed TTB under a different policy. This phenomenon is particularly relevant as most countervailing duties
are imposed simultaneously with antidumping duties on the same products. For a discussion, see Bown (2011).
15

The Appendix lists the trading partners i for each of our thirteen policy-imposing economies. We condition on
major trading partners affected by TTBs given that our estimation includes country fixed effects that would
otherwise explain non-application against countries that a particular imposing country never targeted.
Nevertheless, the trading partners included in our dataset are generally found to be the source of more than
two thirds of the policy-imposing economies’ non-oil imports during the sample period, ranging from 65 percent
for Thailand to 91 percent for Mexico. The Philippines is a notable outlier for which the available bilateral
trading partners comprise only 38 percent of non-oil imports.

12

available in our sensitivity analysis. As we document below, here we also find strong results when we
are able to utilize the unemployment measure.
Third, and most importantly, the current paper also ultimately directly confronts the changing
institutional and policy environment in which emerging economies employ TTBs during 1989-2010. As
noted above, when we turn to examine the channels through which the WTO may be impacting TTB
import protection, one of our key determinants is defined as the share of the country’s HS-06 tariff
lines that are equal to its WTO legal binding, and we look at year-to-year changes in this variable. We
expect a positive relationship between this determinant and the count of products subject to new
TTBs; i.e., if the share of products with applied MFN tariffs equal to the WTO maximum binding tariff
increases, then we expect aggregate-level demand for TTBs to increase, ceteris paribus.16 Note that
while there is inter-temporal variation in this determinant, because both MFN applied rates and WTO
tariff commitments are applied equally to all trading partners, there is no cross- trading partner
variation within a given policy-imposing economy. Furthermore, the country-specific indicator
variable that we employ in the estimation captures any time-invariant differences in the
restrictiveness of WTO commitments across countries.17 In addition, when we compare trade policy
formation under the WTO to policy formation during the GATT years, we interact indicator variables
for the relevant trade agreement regime with the other determinants of interest.
Finally, we estimate the negative binomial regression model of the contemporaneous (time
t=0) count of imported products subject to new import protection, as a function of the value that
these explanatory variables take on one year earlier, i.e., at time t=-1. Table 2 presents summary
statistics for the data used in the empirical analysis, and the Appendix provides more information on
the underlying sources of the data.

16

Indeed, Bown and Crowley (2013a) consider the role of WTO disciplines for high income economies. While the
estimated IRRs from that paper are in line with theoretical expectations, they are not precisely estimated. One
explanation for the imprecision is the lack of inter-temporal and cross-sectional variation in WTO disciplines
across the five high income economies during this sample period.
17

To clarify, we might also expect the level of a country’s WTO disciplines to impact TTB determination. I.e.,
policy-imposing countries that have bound less than 100 percent of their tariffs (see column 1 of Table 1) might
be less likely to use TTBs than others because there is no WTO discipline over products with unbound tariffs.
However, because there is no inter-temporal variation in the share of a country’s MFN tariffs that are bound
during the WTO period, any level differences are captured by the importing country indicator variables.

13

4

Baseline Results for 1995-2010

Table 3 presents results from our empirical model of temporary trade barriers (TTBs) for the full
sample of thirteen emerging economies between 1995 and 2010. We begin with this period because a
common set of rules governing TTB import restrictions came into force with the WTO establishment
in 1995. We consider pre-1995 data in the next Section below.
As is common practice for negative binomial regression models, we report estimates for
incidence rate ratios (IRRs). An estimated IRR with a value that is statistically greater than 1 is
evidence of a positive effect of the explanatory variable of interest, whereas a value statistically less
than 1 is evidence of a negative effect. The table also reports t-statistics for whether the estimated
IRR is statistically different from 1. Each explanatory variable – the bilateral real exchange rate,
domestic real GDP growth, foreign real GDP growth, and bilateral import growth – is lagged one year.
Our basic specifications include bilateral fixed effects for each importing–exporting economy pair to
control for time-invariant, trading-partner-pair-specific heterogeneity in the application of new
import protection through temporary trade barrier policies. We also include a time trend in each
specification. Finally, while the focus of our analysis is on use of all TTBs – antidumping, safeguards,
and countervailing duties – we also include a specification that examines only the antidumping policy.
Historically, antidumping has been the most frequently applied TTB in use by high income and
emerging economies.
The first column of Table 3 indicates the results on the three macroeconomic variables – the
percent change in the bilateral real exchange rate, domestic real GDP growth, and foreign real GDP
growth – are similar to what has been observed for high income economies. The IRR of 1.01 in the
first row indicates an appreciation of the bilateral real exchange rate is associated with more TTBs
against that particular partner in the following year. Import protection also reacts counter-cyclically to
real GDP growth; a decline in both domestic and trading partner GDP growth is associated with more
temporary trade barriers. In particular, the IRR of 0.97 on growth in trading partner i means that
import restrictions are targeted against trading partners experiencing relatively weaker growth in the
previous period. The IRR on bilateral import growth is just slightly greater than one (though it rounds
down to 1.00) and is imprecisely estimated, indicating that changes in import growth have no effect
on the number of temporary trade barriers. Finally, the IRR on the time trend is 1.02, indicating that
import protection under these instruments is trending upward on average for this sample of countries
over this period, though this is not statistically significant.

14

Before moving on to the other specifications in Table 3, we turn to an interpretation of the
economic magnitudes of the results. Since understanding the size of effects is difficult when focusing
on IRRs, Figure 2 presents additional information on the economic significance of the determinants of
temporary new import protection. We begin by computing the model’s predicted estimates of
temporary trade barriers for all observations in our estimation sample. We then introduce a one
standard deviation shock to each variable of interest at time t-1 and predict the count of temporary
trade barriers at time t. Figure 2 illustrates the percent change in the mean number of HS-06 products
subject to TTBs in response to the specified shock.
Overall, Figure 2 indicates that the model predicts sizeable increases in the number of
products subject to TTBs in response to the various macroeconomic shocks. Results from the baseline
specification are quantified by the horizontally striped bars. Beginning with the left side of the figure,
the first four bars quantify how a one standard deviation appreciation of the bilateral real exchange
rate at t-1 impacts the number of products subject to new TTBs at time t. A one standard deviation
appreciation (approximately 18 percent in our sample) increases the number of new TTBs by 18
percent. The second group of four bars quantifies the impact of a domestic economic slowdown. A
one standard deviation decrease in domestic real GDP growth (4.3 percent) leads to a 32 percent
increase in the number of products subject to new import protection. Turning to the third group of
bars in Figure 2, we see that weakness in a bilateral trading partner is also important; a one standard
deviation decrease in trading partner i’s real GDP growth (4.2 percent) is associated with a 16 percent
increase in the number of temporary trade barriers it faces in the following year. Lastly, the fourth
group of bars quantifies the impact of bilateral import growth. Although imprecisely estimated and
not statistically different from one, the exact estimate on the IRR of 1.0006 implies that a one
standard deviation in import growth would lead to a 6 percent increase in new TTBs.
Returning to Table 3, we examine the robustness of our results. Column (2) of Table 3
presents our first sensitivity analysis by substituting the change in the domestic unemployment rate at
time t-1 for domestic real GDP growth as the measure of the health of the domestic economy. The
results are broadly consistent with those reported in column (1). The IRR of 1.20 on the change in the
domestic unemployment rate indicates that temporary trade barriers increase substantially in the
year following an increase in unemployment. Furthermore, as shown in Figure 2, a one standard
deviation increase in the change in the domestic unemployment rate leads to a 31 percent increase in
the number of products subject to TTBs. Quantitatively, the results using this measure are almost the

15

same as that using real GDP growth. While the change in the domestic unemployment rate variable is
the preferred measure of the domestic macroeconomic shock in the analysis of high-income
economies of Bown and Crowley (2013a), the lack of good unemployment rate data for China and
India in particular means that those countries are excluded from any analysis using the
unemployment rate; furthermore, it shortens the available time series of data for other countries. For
this reason, we generally emphasize the results which use real GDP growth as the measure of the
domestic economy.
Columns (3) through (7) demonstrate the robustness of our baseline estimates for 1995-2010
to various other checks. Column (3) replaces the set of bilateral importer-exporter indicators with a
set of importer indicators and a separate set of exporter indicators. The IRRs for the variables of
interest exhibit little qualitative change from the baseline specification. Nevertheless, this approach
also allows us to report the IRR on the indicator that the trading partner is China. The estimated IRR of
9.09 indicates that, controlling for other factors, China’s exporters are roughly nine times more likely
than the omitted exporting country (defined as the median targeted exporter in the sample) to face
import protection through TTBs.18
In column (4), we omit bilateral import growth in order to examine the possibility that
identifying foreign-induced shocks through inclusion of both foreign real GDP growth and import
growth may be collinear. While omission of imports does increase the size of the effect for the
estimated IRR on the foreign real GDP growth slightly, the estimated IRRs on the other variables of
interest are virtually unchanged.
Column (5) presents an alternative characterization of the dependent variable by narrowing it
to consider only the bilateral count of products subject to the antidumping policy alone. Specifically,
we redefine the dependent variable to be the bilateral count of products subject to new antidumping
investigations that result in imposed import restrictions, thereby leaving out the other TTB policies of
safeguards and countervailing duties. As Table 2 indicates, the count of products subject to new
antidumping protection in a year is considerably smaller than that of all temporary trade barriers,
averaging almost 1 fewer product per year per trading partner. Nevertheless, most of our key results
in Table 3 continue to hold even when restricting attention to antidumping in isolation. In particular,
the IRRs for the percent change in the bilateral real exchange rate and domestic real GDP growth are
18

In this particular sample, the median targeted exporter was Australia, which cumulatively had 120 distinct
HS06 product-importer combinations hit with new TTBs during this period, compared to 1446 HS06 productimporter combinations for China’s exporters.

16

statistically different from one, and as Figure 2 indicates, the estimated size of negative real GDP
growth shocks is even larger for antidumping alone than all TTBs jointly. One notable difference from
the baseline results is that GDP growth in a foreign trading partner has no statistically significant
impact on the number of products subject to antidumping. Finally, the general time trend across all of
the countries in this sample is that antidumping alone is on average declining over 1995-2010.19
Column (6) presents a still different approach to construction of the dependent variable
whereby we broaden it (relative to the baseline) to include the count of all products subject to TTB
investigations, including those that may not have resulted in the imposition of new import
restrictions. The results are qualitatively unchanged according to the estimated IRRs and the
magnitudes of the effects illustrated in Figure 2. If anything, TTB investigations alone (relative to
imposed barriers of the baseline definition) appear slightly more responsive to domestic real GDP
shocks and slightly less responsive to real exchange rate appreciations. Furthermore, the overall time
trend of products subject to new investigations during this period is strongly increasing.
Finally, column (7) of Table 3 presents the results from the empirical model of temporary
trade barriers for an important subsample of emerging economies G20 members; i.e., Argentina,
Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa, and Turkey.20 The results for this set of countries
are broadly similar to those for the larger sample of emerging economies.

5

Investigating the Impact of the WTO on New Import Protection

Thus far our estimates for the emerging economies’ use of TTBs have been undertaken on samples of
data beginning in 1995. Our argument is that this is the period during which emerging economies
faced a relatively common set of rules under the WTO regarding how to implement import protection
through TTB policies. In this section we investigate empirically whether this new environment has
affected how aggregate-level shocks feed into new import protection by identifying potential changes
across time associated with the GATT versus WTO institutional regimes. We are able to do so because

19

Bown (2012a) shows country-by-country evidence for which the overall increase in TTB import coverage over
this period is due to inclusion of TTB policies such as safeguards.
20

Collectively, by 2010 these eight countries accounted for 18 percent of world merchandise imports and 20
percent of world GDP.

17

a number of emerging economies had already established and were using TTB policies prior to 1995.21
Here we exploit that information in order to shed additional light on the impact of the WTO
institution by comparing emerging economy use of import protection through TTBs prior to 1995 with
their use under the WTO period of 1995-2010.22
Furthermore, in this section we also introduce and examine the implications for the potential
role of trade policy substitution taking place within a country over time due to WTO membership. As
described in Section 2, when these countries joined the WTO, they committed to binding limits on
their more generally applied MFN tariffs. As the share of a country’s products that are bound by those
limits fluctuates over time – e.g., to the phase-in of scheduled trade liberalization commitments –
there may be a change within a country regarding its need to access other forms of import protection
such as TTBs in response to shocks.
Table 4 presents our results. Column (1) takes our baseline model specification from Table 3,
introduces a longer time series of data for TTB-using countries for which policy use prior to 1995 is
available, and interacts each of the key determinants with an indicator for whether the year was
during the GATT (1989-1994) or WTO (1995-2010) period. For each of the estimated IRRs, the table
also reports the test statistic for whether there is a difference between the estimated IRR of the GATT
and WTO periods. The evidence indicates a number of important channels through which aggregatelevel fluctuations differentially affect import protection through TTBs under the WTO relative to the
GATT period.
The first and direct effect of the change in the institutional environment is captured by the
estimated IRR on the dummy variable for the WTO period. Specification (1) reports an IRR of 1.84 that
is statistically different from 1 indicating that, controlling for a number of other factors, on average
these countries use more TTBs under the WTO relative to the GATT.
For real exchange rates, the estimated IRRs are significantly greater than 1 for the WTO
period, indicating that appreciations are associated with subsequent increases in import protection.

21

Table 1 documents the first year for which the sample begins for each policy-imposing economy, based on its
initial use of TTBs during our sample period.
22

To be precise, our analysis does compare the period of WTO membership against the “pre-membership”
period – and not the GATT period – for one of the countries in our sample. I.e., for China we consider
differential impacts of its years as a WTO member (2002-2010) with its years of TTB use prior to joining the WTO
(1997-2001). For all other countries in the sample we compare 1995-2010 with the pre-1995 period since all
other countries in the sample joined the WTO in 1995.

18

However, this is also a statistically significant change relative to the impact of real exchange rate
movements on TTB import protection during the GATT period. Over 1989-1994, real exchange rate
depreciations (IRR of 0.99) were associated with new import protection. While the IRR for the 19891994 period is imprecisely estimated, it is statistically different from the estimated IRR of 1.01 for the
1995-2010 period.
The second important result of specification (1) is that over the period 1995-2010, there is a
strong counter-cyclical relationship between lagged domestic real GDP growth and new import
protection. This is also distinct from the role this variable took on prior to the WTO; the estimated IRR
for the 1989-1994 period is 1.05. While the estimated IRR on real GDP growth for the 1989-1994
period is also imprecisely estimated, it is also statistically different from the estimated IRR of the
1995-2010 period.
One way to interpret these two pieces of evidence is that the inception of the WTO in 1995
has coincided with a change in behavior as emerging economies began to respond to macroeconomic
shocks by using new TTB import protection in the same way that high-income economies had been
doing since at least the 1980s.23 The evidence suggests a significant change for these emerging
economies relative to the pre-WTO period of 1989-1994, during which factors other than aggregatelevel shocks apparently led to new import protection under TTB policies.
The results of the next two variables from column (1) are mixed. First, the estimated IRRs on
lagged trading partner real GDP growth are statistically less than one in both periods. However, the
estimated IRRs are statistically different from one another, and interestingly, the IRR from the GATT
period is even further away from one than the IRR from the WTO period. This result suggests that
import protection for these countries has become less responsive to negative foreign real GDP shocks
after 1995. Some of this is explained by the relatively short sample of the pre-WTO period which
happens to coincides with foreign recessions (or low growth periods) for significant trading partners
(exporters), such as the United States and European Union.24 This is also partly explained by the
composition of targeted trading partners in the post-1995 period shifting so dramatically toward
23

See Bown and Crowley (2013a) as well as Knetter and Prusa (2003).

24

This also technically holds for China for its “pre-WTO” use of TTBs which began in 1997 and yet its particular
WTO membership period did not begin until the end of 2001 when its accession was implemented. During its
particular pre-WTO period, its use of TTBs targeted important exporters like South Korea and Japan during the
Asian financial crisis, as well as Russia during its crisis in 1999.

19

China, a trading partner with extremely strong (and relatively non-volatile) real GDP growth during
this period.25 Second, while the estimated IRRs on bilateral import growth switch from being less than
one (GATT period) to greater than one (WTO period), neither IRR is estimated as different from one
and the test indicates that the estimates are not statistically different from one another. Thus there is
only weak evidence that import protection through TTBs has become more sensitive to bilateral
import growth surges under the WTO relative to the GATT.
Column (2) of Table 4 presents our paper’s preferred specification whereby we modify the
baseline model to include the new variable introduced in Section 2, defined as the lagged change in
the share of HS06 products under WTO discipline – i.e., the share of products that are constrained by
WTO maximum tariff limits because the applied tariff on a product is equal to its legal binding rate.26
Again, we expect the IRR on this variable to be greater than 1, so that over time as more applied MFN
tariffs become legally immovable in an upward direction, more of a country’s aggregate demand for
new import protection pushes toward TTBs in response to economic shocks. The estimated IRR is 1.04
and it is statistically significant. Furthermore, the rest of the estimated IRRs for the variables of
interest in the estimation in column (2) are qualitatively unchanged.
With these estimates in mind, next consider Figure 3 which presents additional information
on the economic magnitudes of the effects. Results corresponding to the GATT era are represented by
a solid grey bar (specification 2 in Table 4) and a horizontally striped bar (specification 4 in Table 4).
The corresponding results for the WTO era are represented by a black bar (specification 2 of Table 4)
and a vertically striped bar (specification 4 in Table 4). The first striking differences are seen in the
impact of real currency appreciations. During the GATT period before 1995, a one standard deviation
appreciation led to 12-33 percent fewer TTBs in the following year. This is a dramatic difference in
comparison to the WTO period. Under the WTO, a one standard deviation appreciation of the
bilateral real exchange rate led to a 23-31 percent increase in the number of TTBs imposed.
The next group of bars in Figure 3 indicates that, prior to the WTO, weak real GDP growth or
increases in the unemployment rate led to small declines in TTBs the following year. In sharp contrast,
25

For the countries in the sample, almost 25 percent of all HS06 import products impacted by TTBs during this
period targeted exports from China, during a period in which its mean annual real GDP growth rate was 10.09
percent with a standard deviation of 1.90.
26

This variable is interacted with a binary indicator for the WTO period, under the assumption that this channel
was not relevant during the GATT period when most emerging economies had not made significant legal binding
commitments on their applied MFN tariffs.

20

a one standard deviation decline in real GDP growth (increase in the change in the domestic
unemployment rate) under the WTO has been associated with a 25 percent (37 percent) increase in
TTBs in the subsequent year.
The third group of bars more precisely quantifies the results on trading partner growth. In
particular, weak trading partner growth is quantitatively much less important under the WTO period.
Finally, the last group of bars shows how commitments over MFN applied tariffs – or
reductions in available policy space – help push countries toward utilizing TTB policies. As the share of
products with binding tariff commitments increases by one standard deviation, the number of TTBs
increases by 24 percent and 48 percent in specifications (2) and (4), respectively. While these results
do indicate that countries are stepping away from the liberal trade regime and their promises to
lower and bind their applied tariffs, it also represents a commitment to abide by the WTO’s rules and
use the WTO’s sanctioned policy tools of TTBs in response to economic shocks.
The rest of Table 4 presents a set of robustness checks and sensitivity analysis. First, in
column (3) we modify the definition for the WTO tariff binding variable. Here we redefine the share of
products under WTO discipline so that any HS-06 product with an applied import tariff within 10
percentage points of its tariff binding is “under WTO discipline,” a less restrictive condition than
considering only products with applied tariffs equal to the binding. Use of this alternative measure
has only a small impact on the size of the estimated IRRs.
In column (4), we employ our alternative measure for the health of the domestic economy,
substituting the lagged change in the domestic unemployment rate for domestic real GDP growth.
The results are consistent with those obtained earlier – i.e., in the GATT period, the estimated IRR is
less than one (though not significant) indicating that periods of lower unemployment were associated
with heightened import protection through TTBs. While the differential between these two estimated
IRRs is not statistically significant in this sample of data, part of this is likely explained by the poorer
quality of unemployment data during the early period, in terms of how accurately such measures
captured the health of the domestic economy, given the role of the informal sector.27 Furthermore,
because the sample of countries for which the unemployment data is available at all is significantly
27

Even for emerging economies with available unemployment rate data included in the sample, the argument is
that unemployment rate itself may be becoming a more accurate and representative indicator for the overall
health of the domestic economy over time due to the role that the informal sector plays in many countries. I.e.,
unemployment rate data for these countries may be noisier earlier in the sample if there is a general upward
trend in formality within a country over time.

21

reduced, in column (5) we rerun our preferred model specification (of column 2) but with the same
restricted subsample of data underlying the results in column (4). The basic results hold, indicating
that the estimates are not sensitive to dropping major policy-imposing countries such as India and
China from the sample due to the lack of unemployment data for this period.
Finally, in specification (6) we again estimate our preferred specification of the model, but in
this case we only include the subsample of major G20 emerging economies. In each instance, the
qualitative pattern of the results holds.

6

Conclusion

Many emerging economies now exceed high income economies in the frequency and intensity of
their application of the import-restricting antidumping, safeguards, and countervailing duty policies –
collectively referred to as temporary trade barriers (TTBs). This paper investigates the impact of
macroeconomic shocks on these trade policies for thirteen emerging economies between 1989 and
2010. We provide evidence of a general counter-cyclical relationship for the period 1995-2010 under
the WTO. We also provide evidence on changes to these empirical relationships relative to the preWTO period; i.e., emerging economy import protection through TTBs became more counter-cyclical
and sensitive to real exchange rate shocks over time.
Our approach allows us to examine not only the impact of the WTO institution on aggregatelevel channels for new import protection, but we also explicitly address the separate role played by
WTO disciplines on a country’s access to other trade policies such as applied MFN import tariffs. For
these emerging economies, we find that an increase in the share of a country’s imported products
that become subject to WTO disciplines results in significantly more products facing import protection
through TTBs. Nevertheless, our aggregate-level evidence on trade policy substitutability between
applied import tariffs and application of TTBs does not fully resolve the question of why many
emerging economies use TTBs to respond to economic shocks despite the significant “water” that
remains in their tariff bindings. Some of these countries retain considerable freedom under the WTO
to raise applied MFN tariffs, and yet they frequently respond to aggregate-level shocks with more
discriminatory, trading partner-specific TTBs such as antidumping. These puzzles merit further microoriented theoretical and empirical research.

22

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Subramanian, Arvind and Shang-Jin Wei (2007) “The WTO Promotes Trade: Strongly But Unevenly,”
Journal of International Economics 72(1): 151-175.
Tang, Man-Keung and Shang-Jin Wei (2009) “The Value of Making Commitments Externally: Evidence
from WTO Accessions," Journal of International Economics 78(2): 216-22.
WTO (2011) World Tariff Profiles 2011. Geneva: WTO, UNCTAD and International Trade Centre.

24

Appendix: Data Description

Antidumping, safeguards, and countervailing duty policy data at the Harmonized System 6-digit level
by trading partner for 1995-2010 is compiled by the authors from the World Bank’s Temporary Trade
Barriers Database (Bown, 2012b) which is publicly available at http://econ.worldbank.org/ttbd/ .

Bilateral real exchange rate series come from the USDA’s Agricultural Exchange Rate Dataset. For
each observation we use the value as of the last month of the year.

Real GDP growth series comes from IMF’s IFS series with the exception of the European Union. For
the European Union, we use the OECD’s real GDP series for the EU-15.

Domestic unemployment rate change is constructed with data from the International Labor
Organization.

WTO disciplines over tariff come from 6-digit Harmonized System tariff data (simple averages) by
country from TRAINS and WTO.

Trading Partners: For each of the thirteen policy-imposing economies, we start with the 20 trading
partners that are the most frequent targets against which each economy used TTBs over the sample
period. From there, we include all of the top 20 trading partners for which we have quality
macroeconomic data. This reduces the number of included partners to between 10 and 14. The
reported information on percent of imports is based on non-oil imports during the 1995-2010 period.
The trading partners for each policy-imposing economy used in the sample are:


Argentina (14): Australia, Brazil, China, European Union, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Paraguay,
Russia, South Africa, South Korea, Switzerland, Thailand, United States. These economies were
the source of 85 percent of imports.



Brazil (13): Argentina, Chile, China, European Union, India, Japan, Mexico, Pakistan, Russia, South
Africa, South Korea, Thailand, United States. These economies were the source of 84 percent of
imports.



China (10): European Union, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Russia, Singapore, South Korea,
Thailand, United States. These economies were the source of 67 percent of imports.

25



Colombia (12): Brazil, China, European Union, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Russia, Thailand,
South Korea, Trinidad and Tobago, United States, Venezuela. These economies were the source of
75 percent of imports.



India (13): Canada, China, European Union, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Russia, Saudi Arabia,
Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Thailand, United States. These economies were the source
of 69 percent of imports.



Indonesia (11): Australia, China, European Union, India, Japan, Malaysia, Russia, Singapore, South
Korea, Thailand, Turkey. These economies were the source of 74 percent of imports.



Malaysia (12): Australia, Canada, China, European Union, Hong Kong, China; India, Indonesia,
Japan, Philippines, South Korea, Thailand, United States. These economies were the source of 77
percent of imports.



Mexico (12): Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, European Union, Hong Kong, China;
Japan, Pakistan, Russia, South Korea, United States. These economies were the source of 91
percent of imports.



Peru (12): Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, European Union, India, Indonesia, Mexico,
Pakistan, Russia, United States. These economies were the source of 77 percent of imports.



Philippines (8): China, European Union, Hong Kong, China; Indonesia, Malaysia, Russia, South
Korea, Thailand. These economies were the source of 38 percent of imports.



South Africa (13): Australia, Brazil, China, European Union, Hong Kong, China; India, Indonesia,
Pakistan, Russia, South Korea, Thailand, Turkey, United States. These economies were the source
of 78 percent of imports.



Thailand (11): Argentina, China, European Union, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Russia, South
Africa, South Korea, Venezuela. These economies were the source of 65 percent of imports.



Turkey (13): China, Egypt, European Union, Hong Kong, China; India, Indonesia, Israel, Malaysia,
Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Thailand. These economies were the source of 73
percent of imports.

26

Table 1: Temporary Trade Barriers and WTO Disciplines over MFN Tariffs

Economy

Average
MFN tariff
Average
applied
Average TTB import TTB import
Year of
binding bound MFN MFN tariff applied MFN product
product
first TTB in
coverage
tariff rate
rate in tariff rate in coverage
coverage
our
under WTO under WTO
1995*
2010
in 1995
in 2010
estimation
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
(7)

Share of
products with
imposed TTBs
under WTO
discipline,
1995-2010
(8)

Share of
products with
new TTB
imposed
under WTO
discipline,
1995-2010
(9)

Share of
products with
no new TTB
imposed
under WTO
discipline,
1995-2010
(10)

Emerging economy G20 members in sample
Argentina
Brazil
China
India
Indonesia
Mexico
South Africa
Turkey

100.0
100.0
100.0
73.8
95.8
100.0
96.6
50.4

31.9
31.4
10.0
49.4
37.2
35.0
19.2
28.5

12.1
13.0
15.9
14.5
15.3
13.1
14.2
9.4

12.5
13.7
9.6
12.4
6.7
8.9
7.6
9.9

1.3
0.4
0.0
0.2
0.0
24.1
0.4
0.7

3.3
1.6
1.4
6.6
0.6
1.2
0.6
6.9

1989
1989
1997
1992
1996
1989
1992
1989

18.3
39.4
76.8
55.4
12.0
3.8
77.4
3.7

20.2
27.3
67.9
49.4
12.7
9.0
78.1
4.4

15.3
17.6
67.3
30.1
8.4
8.1
63.0
25.6

13.7
8.1
16.5
20.3
23.1

12.5
7.0
5.4
6.3
9.7

0.1
0.0
0.2
0.0
0.0

0.8
0.1
2.5
0.2
0.5

1991
1996
1992
1994
1996

0.0
24.9
27.0
11.1
0.0

0.0
32.7
37.1
10.0
32.6

0.3
69.1
12.9
19.1
27.9

Emerging economy non-G20 members in sample
Colombia
Malaysia
Peru
Philippines
Thailand

100.0
84.3
100.0
67.0
75.0

42.9
14.6
30.1
25.7
25.7

Source: All data computed from the HS-06 level. Column (1) is from WTO (2011), columns (2), (3), and (4) are calculated by the authors from WITS, columns (5) and
(6) are from Bown (2012a). Columns (8), (9) and (10) calculated by the authors for each year, 1995-2010, and then time-averaged; note that ‘under WTO discipline’ is
defined as products for which the applied MFN tariff rate is no more than 10 percentage points lower than the binding. Column (8) is the average over 1995-2010 of
the share of all newly imposed TTBs in year t that are under WTO discipline in year t. Column (9) is the share of products with a new TTB imposed in year t+1 that is
under WTO discipline in year t. Column (10) is the share of products with no new TTB imposed at t+1 that is under WTO discipline in year t. All countries joined the
WTO in 1995 except China (2001). *Tariff year data for China is 2001, its year of WTO accession, whereas tariff year data for economies such as Malaysia (1996),
South Africa (1996), and India (1997) is the first year available after 1995.

27

Table 2: Summary Statistics

Variables

Full sample of
13 emerging economies
1995-2010
1989-1994

G20 emerging
economies only
1995-2010
1989-1994

Dependent Variables
Bilateral (ij) count of products initiated
under all temporary trade barrier (TTB)
policies in year t that result in import
protection (products per year per trading
partner

2.52
(8.69)

0.88
(3.26)

3.39
(9.86)

1.01
(3.57)

Bilateral (ij) count of products initiated
under all temporary trade barrier (TTB)
policies in year t (products per year per
trading partner)

5.26
(23.39)

3.14
(12.70)

4.88
(11.68)

3.74
(13.95)

Bilateral (ij) count of products initiated
under antidumping (AD) policies in year t
that result in import protection (products
per year per trading partner) *

1.66
(5.70)

0.91
(3.35)

1.69
(5.87)

1.05
(3.68)

Percent change in bilateral real exchange
rate ijt-1

1.39
(18.35)

13.71
(65.84)

1.62
(19.66)

15.78
(71.79)

Domestic real GDP growth jt-1

4.50
(4.28)

3.66
(3.86)

4.42
(4.39)

3.76
(4.16)

Change in domestic unemployment rate jt1*

0.07
(1.46)

0.23
(1.12)

0.04
(1.68)

0.37
(1.06)

Real GDP growth of trading partner it-1

4.17
(4.17)

4.98
(4.09)

4.09
(4.03)

4.87
(4.09)

Bilateral import growth from trading
partner ijt-1

6.74
(91.87)

0.95
(5.69)

10.25
(113.86)

0.92
(6.15)

Change in the share of imported products
under WTO discipline jt-1*

-1.05
(6.08)

--

-0.80
(4.45)

--

Explanatory Variables

Observations
2373
459
1541
377
Notes: Sample means reported with standard deviations in parentheses. *Summary statistics for these
variables based on fewer observations than listed, exact amount depending on subsample. (The subsample
difference explains why for the 1989-1994 period the average count of products subject to AD alone is
greater than the average count of products subject to all TTBs.)

28

Table 3: Negative Binomial Model Estimates of Determinants of Import Protection, 1995-2010
Dependent variable: Bilateral (ij) count of products initiated under all temporary trade barrier (TTB) policies
in year t that result in import protection

Substitute
Modify
Baseline domestic un- country
specification employment indicators
Explanatory Variables
Percent change in bilateral real exchange rate ijt-1
Domestic real GDP growth jt-1
Domestic unemployment rate change jt-1
Real GDP growth of trading partner it-1
Bilateral import growth from trading partner ijt-1
Time trend
Indicator that exporter is China*

(1)

(2)
b

1.01
(2.30)
a
0.94
(3.56)
-c

0.97
(1.86)
1.00
(0.95)
1.02
(1.62)
--

(3)
b

1.01
(2.10)
-a

1.20
(2.85)
0.98
(0.65)
1.15
(0.57)
0.97
(1.04)
--

Drop
import
growth
(4)

(5)

b

1.01
(2.04)
b
0.96
(2.35)
-c

0.96
(1.94)
--

0.97
(1.79)
1.00
(0.22)
1.01
(0.41)
a
9.09
(5.26)
no
yes

Redefine
Redefine
dependent
dependent variable to all
variable to
TTB
AD only investigations
(6)

G20
emerging
economies
only
(7)

b

1.01
(2.25)
a
0.94
(3.60)
--

b

1.01
(2.30)
a
0.92
(4.26)
--

1.01
(1.69)
a
0.93
(4.37)
--

c

1.01
(2.00)
a
0.93
(3.56)
--

c

1.01
(0.54)
1.00
(1.21)
b
0.97
(2.09)
--

0.97
(1.86)
1.00
(0.72)
a
1.06
(3.95)
--

c

0.98
(1.19)
1.00
(0.99)
c
1.03
(1.83)
--

1.02
(1.57)
--

b

Importer-exporter combined fixed effects
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
Separate importer and exporter fixed effects
no
no
no
no
no
no
Observations
2,373
1,393
2,373
2,373
2,373
2,373
1,541
Notes: Policy-imposing countries j vis-à-vis one of the trading partners i (listed in the Appendix) over 1995-2010. Explanatory variables are each lagged
one year (at t-1). Incidence Rate Ratios (IRRs) are reported in lieu of coefficient estimates, with t-statistics in parentheses. Model includes a constant term
whose estimate is suppressed. Superscripts a, b, and c indicate statistical significance at the 1 percent, 5 percent, and 10 percent levels, respectively.
AD=antidumping. *Excluded exporter fixed effect is for the median country by total products targeted by all policy-imposing countries in the sample
during 1995-2010, which was Australia.

29

Table 4: The Impact of the WTO Agreement on Time-Varying Import Protection
Dependent variable: Bilateral (ij) count of products initiated under all temporary
trade barrier (TTB) policies in year t that result in import protection

Explanatory variables
Percent change in bilateral real
exchange rate ijt-1 x GATT
Percent change in bilateral real
exchange rate ijt-1 x WTO
[Test statistic]
Domestic economy jt-1 x GATT
Domestic economy jt-1 x WTO
[Test statistic]
Real GDP growth of trading partner
it-1 x GATT
Real GDP growth of trading partner
it-1 x WTO
[Test statistic]
Import growth from trading partner
ijt-1 x GATT
Import growth from trading partner
ijt-1 x WTO
[Test statistic]
WTO

Baseline
(1)
0.99
(0.86)
a
1.01
(2.75)

Add tariff
variable
(2)
0.99
(0.83)
a
1.01
(2.77)

Change Substitute Real GDP
definition unemploy- on same
of tariff ment rate subsample
variable
change
as (4)
(3)
(4)
(5)
c
0.99
0.99
0.99
(0.84)
(1.91)
(1.09)
a
b
c
1.01
1.01
1.01
(2.65)
(2.06)
(1.80)

[7.99]

a

[8.01]

a

[7.44]

b

[6.57]

a

[4.21]

[5.54]

1.05
(1.11)
a
0.95
(2.96)

1.05
(1.15)
a
0.95
(2.97)

1.05
(1.14)
a
0.95
(2.83)

0.94
(0.29)
a
1.24
(3.44)

1.15
(2.30)
b
0.94
(2.03)

a

1.06
(1.47)
a
0.95
(2.59)

[4.72]

b

[4.88]

b

[4.62]

b

[1.57]

[8.62]

a

[6.17]

0.85
(4.12)
b
0.96
(1.98)

a

0.85
(4.09)
c
0.97
(1.70)

a

0.85
(4.11)
c
0.97
(1.81)

a

0.85
(2.54)
0.99
(0.19)

b

0.88
(1.88)
1.00
(0.07)

c

0.85
(4.03)
0.97
(1.37)

[9.99]

a

[10.64]

[10.41]

[6.00]

b

[3.70]

c

[10.90]

0.89
(1.13)
1.00
(1.04)

0.89
(1.11)
1.00
(1.02)

0.89
(1.13)
1.00
(1.06)

0.81
(1.39)
1.21
(0.79)

0.73
(1.57)
1.18
(0.65)

0.87
(1.28)
1.00
(1.04)

[1.28]

[1.25]

[1.28]

[2.01]

[2.22]

[1.65]

c

1.92
(1.80)

c

1.83
(1.66)

c

0.98
(0.03)

3.78
(2.32)

b

2.39
(2.38)

a

a

a

a

1.84
(1.67)

a

a

b

G20
only
(6)
0.99
(0.45)
b
1.01
(2.41)
b

b

a

a

b

Change in the share of imported
-1.04
1.03
1.07
1.06
1.03
products under WTO discipline jt-1
(3.24)
(2.71)
(2.94)
(2.61)
(1.60)
x WTO
Time trend included
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
Import and exporter combined fixed
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
effects
Observations
2,777
2,777
2,777
1,633
1,633
1,863
Notes: Policy-imposing countries j vis-à-vis one of the trading partners i (listed in the Appendix) over 1989-2010.
Explanatory variables are each lagged one year (at t-1). The domestic economy variable is defined as the lagged
change in domestic real GDP growth in all columns except (4) in which it is defined as the lagged change in the
domestic unemployment rate. Incidence Rate Ratios (IRRs) are reported in lieu of coefficient estimates, with tstatistics in parentheses. Each model includes a constant term whose estimates are suppressed. Superscripts a,
b, and c indicate statistical significance at the 1 percent, 5 percent, and 10 percent levels, respectively. The
notation x GATT indicates that a dummy for the GATT years (1994 and earlier) is turned on, whereas x WTO
indicates that a dummy for the WTO years (1995-2010) is turned on.

30

Figure 1: Changes to WTO Disciplines over Emerging Economy Applied Tariffs, 1996-2010

10

Change in
the percent
of products at
WTO maximum
tariff rate
ARG
ARG
BRA

0

MYS
TUR
BRA
COL
ARG

MYS
COL
ARG
TUR
BRA

TUR
ARG
BRA
COL
PER
MEX
PHL

TUR
IDN
MEX
COL
PER
ARG
BRA
PHL

PER
COL
MEX
ARG
TUR
BRA
IDN
PHL
ZAF

IND
THA
ARG
COL
IDN
MEX
BRA
PHL
TUR
PER
ZAF

IND
ZAF
BRA
MEX
COL
PER
IDN
PHL
TUR
MYS
ARG
CHN

MEX
TUR
ZAF
BRA
COL
IDN
MYS
PER
CHN
PHL

PHL
COL
IDN
PER
TUR
BRA
MEX
CHN
ZAF
THA

COL
IDN
MEX
PER
PHL
ZAF
ARG
BRA
TUR
THA
CHN

TUR
BRA
ARG
COL
IDN
PER
PHL
THA
ZAF
MEX
MYS
IND
CHN

CHN
IND
ARG
TUR
MEX
COL
MYS
PER
PHL
BRA
IDN
ZAF
THA

-10

MYS
PHL

ZAF
THA
COL
IDN
PER
MEX
PHL
TUR
IND
MYS

TUR
IND
PHL
BRA
ARG
COL
PER
IDN
MYS
THA
CHN
ZAF

CHN

MEX

ZAF
CHN
BRA
COL
TUR
PER
PHL
MEX
IDN
ARG

ARG

IDN

IND

PHL

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

1996

1997

IND

-30

-20

IND

Notes: Constructed by the authors from WTO (2011) and WITS. For scaling purposes, one observation for
Thailand of -60 percent in 2000 is omitted from the figure; this observation is included in the empirical analysis.

31

Figure 2: Temporary Trade Barrier Responsiveness to Macroeconomic Shocks, 1995-2010
Percent change in HS-06 products
subject to new import protection in
response to one s.d. shock

50
40
30
20
10
0
-10
Real appreciation of bilateral
exchange rate
Baseline (1)

Negative shock to domestic
economy

Substitute domestic unemployment (2)

Decline in foreign real GDP

AD only (5)

All TTB investigations (6)

Increase in bilateral import growth

G20 only (7)

Notes: Percent change in HS-06 products subject to new import protection per year per trading partner.
Based on Table 3 model estimates with specifications given in parentheses, and a one standard deviation
change in each explanatory variable away from the sample mean, holding all other variables constant.
Models (1), (5), (6), and (7) are estimated using the lagged domestic real GDP growth rate as the negative
shock to the domestic economy, whereas as model (2) is estimated using the lagged change in the level of
the domestic unemployment rate.

32

Figure 3: TTB Import Protection and Macroeconomic Shocks during the GATT versus WTO Periods
Percent change in HS-06 products
subject to new import protection
in response to one s.d. shock

120
100
80
60

40
20
0
-20
-40
Real appreciation of bilateral
exchange rate
GATT era (1989-1994),
domestic real GDP shock

Negative shock to domestic
economy

GATT era (1989-1994),
domestic unemployment shock

Decline in foreign real GDP

WTO era (1995-2010),
domestic real GDP shock

Increase in share of products
under WTO discipline*
WTO era (1995-2010),
domestic unemployment shock

Notes: Percent increase in HS-06 products subject to new import protection per year per trading partner, based
on Table 4 model estimates of specifications (2) and (4). In each case the approach is to use a one standard
deviation change in each explanatory variable away from the sample mean, holding all other variables constant,
where the mean and subsample are defined on the relevant subsample of years. *Variable only relevant for the
WTO period.

33

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Health and the Savings of Insured Versus Uninsured, Working-Age Households in the U.S.
Maude Toussaint-Comeau and Jonathan Hartley

WP-09-22

WP-09-23

The Economics of “Radiator Springs:” Industry Dynamics, Sunk Costs, and
Spatial Demand Shifts
Jeffrey R. Campbell and Thomas N. Hubbard

WP-09-24

On the Relationship between Mobility, Population Growth, and
Capital Spending in the United States
Marco Bassetto and Leslie McGranahan

WP-09-25

The Impact of Rosenwald Schools on Black Achievement
Daniel Aaronson and Bhashkar Mazumder

WP-09-26

Comment on “Letting Different Views about Business Cycles Compete”
Jonas D.M. Fisher

WP-10-01

Macroeconomic Implications of Agglomeration
Morris A. Davis, Jonas D.M. Fisher and Toni M. Whited

WP-10-02

Accounting for non-annuitization
Svetlana Pashchenko

WP-10-03

2

Working Paper Series (continued)
Robustness and Macroeconomic Policy
Gadi Barlevy

WP-10-04

Benefits of Relationship Banking: Evidence from Consumer Credit Markets
Sumit Agarwal, Souphala Chomsisengphet, Chunlin Liu, and Nicholas S. Souleles

WP-10-05

The Effect of Sales Tax Holidays on Household Consumption Patterns
Nathan Marwell and Leslie McGranahan

WP-10-06

Gathering Insights on the Forest from the Trees: A New Metric for Financial Conditions
Scott Brave and R. Andrew Butters

WP-10-07

Identification of Models of the Labor Market
Eric French and Christopher Taber

WP-10-08

Public Pensions and Labor Supply Over the Life Cycle
Eric French and John Jones

WP-10-09

Explaining Asset Pricing Puzzles Associated with the 1987 Market Crash
Luca Benzoni, Pierre Collin-Dufresne, and Robert S. Goldstein

WP-10-10

Prenatal Sex Selection and Girls’ Well‐Being: Evidence from India
Luojia Hu and Analía Schlosser

WP-10-11

Mortgage Choices and Housing Speculation
Gadi Barlevy and Jonas D.M. Fisher

WP-10-12

Did Adhering to the Gold Standard Reduce the Cost of Capital?
Ron Alquist and Benjamin Chabot

WP-10-13

Introduction to the Macroeconomic Dynamics:
Special issues on money, credit, and liquidity
Ed Nosal, Christopher Waller, and Randall Wright

WP-10-14

Summer Workshop on Money, Banking, Payments and Finance: An Overview
Ed Nosal and Randall Wright

WP-10-15

Cognitive Abilities and Household Financial Decision Making
Sumit Agarwal and Bhashkar Mazumder

WP-10-16

Complex Mortgages
Gene Amromin, Jennifer Huang, Clemens Sialm, and Edward Zhong

WP-10-17

The Role of Housing in Labor Reallocation
Morris Davis, Jonas Fisher, and Marcelo Veracierto

WP-10-18

Why Do Banks Reward their Customers to Use their Credit Cards?
Sumit Agarwal, Sujit Chakravorti, and Anna Lunn

WP-10-19

3

Working Paper Series (continued)
The impact of the originate-to-distribute model on banks
before and during the financial crisis
Richard J. Rosen

WP-10-20

Simple Markov-Perfect Industry Dynamics
Jaap H. Abbring, Jeffrey R. Campbell, and Nan Yang

WP-10-21

Commodity Money with Frequent Search
Ezra Oberfield and Nicholas Trachter

WP-10-22

Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards and the Market for New Vehicles
Thomas Klier and Joshua Linn

WP-11-01

The Role of Securitization in Mortgage Renegotiation
Sumit Agarwal, Gene Amromin, Itzhak Ben-David, Souphala Chomsisengphet,
and Douglas D. Evanoff

WP-11-02

Market-Based Loss Mitigation Practices for Troubled Mortgages
Following the Financial Crisis
Sumit Agarwal, Gene Amromin, Itzhak Ben-David, Souphala Chomsisengphet,
and Douglas D. Evanoff

WP-11-03

Federal Reserve Policies and Financial Market Conditions During the Crisis
Scott A. Brave and Hesna Genay

WP-11-04

The Financial Labor Supply Accelerator
Jeffrey R. Campbell and Zvi Hercowitz

WP-11-05

Survival and long-run dynamics with heterogeneous beliefs under recursive preferences
Jaroslav Borovička

WP-11-06

A Leverage-based Model of Speculative Bubbles (Revised)
Gadi Barlevy

WP-11-07

Estimation of Panel Data Regression Models with Two-Sided Censoring or Truncation
Sule Alan, Bo E. Honoré, Luojia Hu, and Søren Leth–Petersen

WP-11-08

Fertility Transitions Along the Extensive and Intensive Margins
Daniel Aaronson, Fabian Lange, and Bhashkar Mazumder

WP-11-09

Black-White Differences in Intergenerational Economic Mobility in the US
Bhashkar Mazumder

WP-11-10

Can Standard Preferences Explain the Prices of Out-of-the-Money S&P 500 Put Options?
Luca Benzoni, Pierre Collin-Dufresne, and Robert S. Goldstein

WP-11-11

Business Networks, Production Chains, and Productivity:
A Theory of Input-Output Architecture
Ezra Oberfield
Equilibrium Bank Runs Revisited
Ed Nosal

WP-11-12

WP-11-13

4

Working Paper Series (continued)
Are Covered Bonds a Substitute for Mortgage-Backed Securities?
Santiago Carbó-Valverde, Richard J. Rosen, and Francisco Rodríguez-Fernández

WP-11-14

The Cost of Banking Panics in an Age before “Too Big to Fail”
Benjamin Chabot

WP-11-15

Import Protection, Business Cycles, and Exchange Rates:
Evidence from the Great Recession
Chad P. Bown and Meredith A. Crowley

WP-11-16

Examining Macroeconomic Models through the Lens of Asset Pricing
Jaroslav Borovička and Lars Peter Hansen

WP-12-01

The Chicago Fed DSGE Model
Scott A. Brave, Jeffrey R. Campbell, Jonas D.M. Fisher, and Alejandro Justiniano

WP-12-02

Macroeconomic Effects of Federal Reserve Forward Guidance
Jeffrey R. Campbell, Charles L. Evans, Jonas D.M. Fisher, and Alejandro Justiniano

WP-12-03

Modeling Credit Contagion via the Updating of Fragile Beliefs
Luca Benzoni, Pierre Collin-Dufresne, Robert S. Goldstein, and Jean Helwege

WP-12-04

Signaling Effects of Monetary Policy
Leonardo Melosi

WP-12-05

Empirical Research on Sovereign Debt and Default
Michael Tomz and Mark L. J. Wright

WP-12-06

Credit Risk and Disaster Risk
François Gourio

WP-12-07

From the Horse’s Mouth: How do Investor Expectations of Risk and Return
Vary with Economic Conditions?
Gene Amromin and Steven A. Sharpe

WP-12-08

Using Vehicle Taxes To Reduce Carbon Dioxide Emissions Rates of
New Passenger Vehicles: Evidence from France, Germany, and Sweden
Thomas Klier and Joshua Linn

WP-12-09

Spending Responses to State Sales Tax Holidays
Sumit Agarwal and Leslie McGranahan

WP-12-10

Micro Data and Macro Technology
Ezra Oberfield and Devesh Raval

WP-12-11

The Effect of Disability Insurance Receipt on Labor Supply: A Dynamic Analysis
Eric French and Jae Song

WP-12-12

5

Working Paper Series (continued)
Medicaid Insurance in Old Age
Mariacristina De Nardi, Eric French, and John Bailey Jones

WP-12-13

Fetal Origins and Parental Responses
Douglas Almond and Bhashkar Mazumder

WP-12-14

Repos, Fire Sales, and Bankruptcy Policy
Gaetano Antinolfi, Francesca Carapella, Charles Kahn, Antoine Martin,
David Mills, and Ed Nosal

WP-12-15

Speculative Runs on Interest Rate Pegs
The Frictionless Case
Marco Bassetto and Christopher Phelan

WP-12-16

Institutions, the Cost of Capital, and Long-Run Economic Growth:
Evidence from the 19th Century Capital Market
Ron Alquist and Ben Chabot

WP-12-17

Emerging Economies, Trade Policy, and Macroeconomic Shocks
Chad P. Bown and Meredith A. Crowley

WP-12-18

6