IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedlrv/y1999ijanp33-40n1.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Using the gravity model to estimate the costs of protection

Author

Listed:
  • Howard J. Wall

Abstract

Many economists expend a lot of energy decrying trade protectionism; nonetheless, their estimates of the actual burden that protectionism imposes on the economy have been surprisingly small. In this article, Howard J. Wall presents a method that captures some of the effects and distortions of trade protection which have not been captured by existing methods. Wall finds that during 1996, worldwide protectionism reduced U.S. exports by 26.2 percent. Likewise, U.S. protectionism decreased U.S. imports from non-NAFTA countries by 15.4 percent. He calculates further that the welfare cost of U.S. protectionism amounted to about 1.45 percent of U.S. national income, which is much higher than previous estimates.

Suggested Citation

  • Howard J. Wall, 1999. "Using the gravity model to estimate the costs of protection," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, issue Jan, pages 33-40.
  • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedlrv:y:1999:i:jan:p:33-40:n:1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://files.stlouisfed.org/files/htdocs/publications/review/99/01/9901hw.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alan V. Deardorff, 2011. "Determinants of Bilateral Trade: Does Gravity Work in a Neoclassical World?," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Robert M Stern (ed.), Comparative Advantage, Growth, And The Gains From Trade And Globalization A Festschrift in Honor of Alan V Deardorff, chapter 24, pages 267-293, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    2. Takatoshi Ito & Anne O. Krueger, 1997. "Regionalism versus Multilateral Trade Arrangements," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number ito_97-1, June.
    3. Robert W. Staiger & Frank A. Wolak, 1994. "Measuring Industry-Specific Protection: Antidumping in the United States," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 25(1994 Micr), pages 51-118.
    4. Baldwin, Robert E., 1984. "Trade policies in developed countries," Handbook of International Economics, in: R. W. Jones & P. B. Kenen (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 12, pages 571-619, Elsevier.
    5. Bergstrand, Jeffrey H, 1985. "The Gravity Equation in International Trade: Some Microeconomic Foundations and Empirical Evidence," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 67(3), pages 474-481, August.
    6. Anderson, James E, 1979. "A Theoretical Foundation for the Gravity Equation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 69(1), pages 106-116, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Michele FRATIANNI & Chang HOON HO, 2007. "On the Relationship Between RTA Expansion and Openness," Working Papers 288, Universita' Politecnica delle Marche (I), Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali.
    2. James E. Anderson & Eric van Wincoop, 2004. "Trade Costs," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 42(3), pages 691-751, September.
    3. Andres Faiña & Jesus Lopez-Rodríguez, 2003. "Population Potentials and Development Levels: Empirical Findings in the European Union," ERSA conference papers ersa03p30, European Regional Science Association.
    4. Jérôme Trotignon, 2010. "La restriction des émissions de CO2 pénalise-t-elle les exportations ? Un modèle de gravité avec données de panel et variables muettes régionales," Post-Print halshs-00477244, HAL.
    5. Vangelis Tzouvelekas, 2007. "Accounting for pairwise heterogeneity in bilateral trade flows: a stochastic varying coefficient gravity model," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(12), pages 927-930.
    6. Baier, Scott L. & Bergstrand, Jeffrey H., 2001. "The growth of world trade: tariffs, transport costs, and income similarity," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 1-27, February.
    7. Soloaga, Isidro & Alan Wintersb, L., 2001. "Regionalism in the nineties: what effect on trade?," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 1-29, March.
    8. Michele Fratianni & Chang Hoon Oh, 2009. "Expanding RTAs, trade flows, and the multinational enterprise," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 40(7), pages 1206-1227, September.
    9. Trotignon, Jérôme, 2010. "La Restriction des émissions de CO2 pénalise-t-elle les exportations? Un modèle de gravité avec données de panel et variables muettes régionales," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 86(1), pages 5-33, mars.
    10. Céline CARRERE, 2003. "Revisiting the Effects of Regional Trading Agreements on trade flows with Proper Specification of the Gravity Model," Working Papers 200310, CERDI.
    11. Martínez-Zarzoso, Inmaculada & Felicitas, Nowak-Lehmann D. & Horsewood, Nicholas, 2009. "Are regional trading agreements beneficial?: Static and dynamic panel gravity models," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 46-65, March.
    12. Thompson, Gary D. & Cepeda, Ricardo Cavazos, 2002. "Gauging The Recent Effects Of The North American Free Trade Agreement," Journal of Food Distribution Research, Food Distribution Research Society, vol. 33(01), pages 1-13, March.
    13. Inmaculada Martínez-Zarzoso & Felicitas Nowak-Lehmann D. & Nicholas Horsewood, 2006. "Effects of Regional Trade Agreements Using a Static and Dynamic Gravity Equation," Ibero America Institute for Econ. Research (IAI) Discussion Papers 149, Ibero-America Institute for Economic Research.
    14. Michele Fratianni & Francesco Marchionne, 2011. "The Limits to Integration," Chapters, in: Miroslav N. Jovanović (ed.), International Handbook on the Economics of Integration, Volume I, chapter 9, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    15. Joras Ferwerda & Mark Kattenberg & Han-Hsin Chang & Brigitte Unger & Loek Groot & Jacob A. Bikker, 2013. "Gravity models of trade-based money laundering," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(22), pages 3170-3182, August.
    16. Peter Egger & Douglas Nelson, 2011. "How Bad Is Antidumping? Evidence from Panel Data," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 93(4), pages 1374-1390, November.
    17. Ghatak, Subrata & Piperakis, Andromachi S., 2007. "The impact of Eastern European immigration to UK trade," Economics Discussion Papers 2007-3, School of Economics, Kingston University London.
    18. Walid Hejazi, 2005. "Are Regional Concentrations of OECD Exports and Outward FDI Consistent with Gravity?," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 33(4), pages 423-436, December.
    19. Mutti, John & Grubert, Harry, 2004. "Empirical asymmetries in foreign direct investment and taxation," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(2), pages 337-358, March.
    20. Marco Dueñas & Giorgio Fagiolo, 2013. "Modeling the International-Trade Network: a gravity approach," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 8(1), pages 155-178, April.

    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:fedlrv:y:1999:i:jan:p:33-40:n:1. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Scott St. Louis (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbslus.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.