IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/imf/imfwpa/2022-001.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A Measurement of Aggregate Trade Restrictions and their Economic Effects

Author

Listed:
  • Julia Estefania-Flores
  • Davide Furceri
  • Mrs. Swarnali A Hannan
  • Mr. Jonathan David Ostry
  • Mr. Andrew K. Rose

Abstract

We develop a new Measure of Aggregate Trade Restrictions (MATR) using data from the IMF’s Annual Report on Exchange Arrangements and Exchange Restrictions. MATR is an empirical measure of how restrictive official government policy is towards the international flow of goods and services. MATR is simple, ad hoc, plausible, quantitative, easily updated, based solely on policy-relevant measures of trade policy, and covers an unbalanced sample of up to 157 countries annually between 1949 and 2019. MATR is strongly correlated with, but more comprehensive than, existing measures of openness and trade policy existing measures. We use MATR to show that trade restrictions are harmful for the economy and lead to significant contractions in output.

Suggested Citation

  • Julia Estefania-Flores & Davide Furceri & Mrs. Swarnali A Hannan & Mr. Jonathan David Ostry & Mr. Andrew K. Rose, 2022. "A Measurement of Aggregate Trade Restrictions and their Economic Effects," IMF Working Papers 2022/001, International Monetary Fund.
    • Handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2022/001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=511286
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kym Anderson & Sundar Ponnusamy, 2022. "Structural transformation away from agriculture: What role for trade?," Departmental Working Papers 2022-04, The Australian National University, Arndt-Corden Department of Economics.
    2. Estefania-Flores, Julia & Furceri, Davide & Hannan, Swarnali A. & Ostry, Jonathan D. & Rose, Andrew K., 2023. "Are trade restrictions counter-cyclical? Evidence from a new aggregate measure," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 45(4), pages 745-767.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Empricial; data; protection; tariffs; non-tariff barriers; policy; annual; panel.; MATR data construction; MATR value; MATR component; changes in MATR; evolution of MATR; Trade barriers; Tariffs; Trade policy; Imports; Exports; Global; alternative measures;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F13 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade Policy; International Trade Organizations
    • F15 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Economic Integration

    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:imf:imfwpa:2022/001. 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: Akshay Modi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/imfffus.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.