IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fednls/87042.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Did the West Coast Port Dispute Contribute to the First-Quarter GDP Slowdown?

Author

Abstract

The decline in U.S. GDP of 0.2 percent in the first quarter of 2015 was much larger than market analysts expected, with net exports subtracting a staggering 1.9 percentage points (seasonally adjusted annualized rate). A range of factors is being discussed in policy circles to try to understand what contributed to this decline. Factors such as the strong U.S. dollar and weak foreign demand are usually incorporated in forecasters' models. However, the effects of unusual events such as extremely cold weather and labor disputes are more difficult to quantify in standard models. In this post, we examine how the labor dispute at the West Coast ports, which began in the middle of 2014, might have affected GDP growth. Although the dispute started as early as July 2014, major disruptions to international trade did not surface until 2015:Q1. By that time, export and import growth through the West Coast ports in the first quarter were 14 percentage points to 20 percentage points lower than growth through other ports.

Suggested Citation

  • Mary Amiti & Tyler Bodine-Smith & Michele Cavallo & Logan T. Lewis, 2015. "Did the West Coast Port Dispute Contribute to the First-Quarter GDP Slowdown?," Liberty Street Economics 20150702, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fednls:87042
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2015/07/did-the-west-coast-port-dispute-contribute-to-the-first-quarter-gdp-slowdown.html
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    imports; ports; exports; GDP;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F00 - International Economics - - General - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fednls:87042. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Gabriella Bucciarelli (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbnyus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.