How does trade respond to anticipated tariff changes? Evidence from NAFTA

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Khan, Shafaat Yar; Khederlarian, Armen
• 署名单位: The World Bank; University of Connecticut
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-1996
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jinteco.2021.103538
• 发表日期: 2021
• 关键词: Anticipation; Trade elasticity; inventories; NAFTA; Phaseouts

摘要

Firms anticipate upcoming tariff changes by shifting their purchases to periods with lower costs. This paper shows that such anticipatory dynamics overstate the trade elasticity. Standard identification of the trade response to trade cost changes uses tariff variation from Free Trade Agreements (FTA) and assumes that trade flows equal their consumption. However, FTAs eliminate tariffs gradually through announced phaseouts. This allows firms to delay their purchases until tariff cuts are effective while consuming their inventories. Indeed, during NAFTA's staged tariff reductions, imports experienced sizable anticipatory slumps followed by liberalization bumps. To study the behavior of consumed imports we construct a measure that uses inventory-sales ratios to smooth out trade flows. Its application to the data yields that the annual trade -flow elasticity is 56% larger than the trade-consumption response and that the ratio of the long-to short-run elasticity increases from 2.3 with trade flows to 3.4 with consumed imports. The measure is validated through Monte Carlo simulations of a (s,s =) ordering model that reproduces the observed trade pattern. (c) 2021 Published by Elsevier B.V.