Import Dynamics and Demands for Protection
What kinds of changes in foreign competition lead domestic industries to seek import protection? To address this question this paper uses detailed monthly U.S. import data to investigate changes in import composition during a 24-month window immedi...
Main Authors: | , |
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Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
Language: | English en_US |
Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2014
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Subjects: | |
Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2014/03/19189979/import-dynamics-demands-protection http://hdl.handle.net/10986/17301 |
Summary: | What kinds of changes in foreign
competition lead domestic industries to seek import
protection? To address this question this paper uses
detailed monthly U.S. import data to investigate changes in
import composition during a 24-month window immediately
preceding the filing of a petition for protection. A
decomposition methodology allows a comparison of imports
from two groups of countries supplying the same product:
those that are named in the petition and those that are not.
The same decomposition can be applied to products quite
similar to the imports in question, but not subject to a
petition. The results suggest that industries typically seek
protection when faced with a specific pattern of shocks.
First, a persistent positive relative supply shock favors
imports from named countries. Second, a negative demand
shock hits imports from all sources just prior to domestic
industries' petition for protection. The relative
supply shock is a broad one; it applies both to named
commodities and to the comparison product group. The import
demand shock, by contrast, is narrow, hitting only named
products. The latter shock is also large: import growth over
the two-year window is 15 percentage points lower in named
products than in reference products, with most of this gap
arising in the final two quarters before the petition. The
negative import demand shock appears to be a key event in
the run-up to the filing of a petition. It has been missed
by previous studies using more aggregated data. |
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