Protectionism and business cycles. Evidence from import barriers in Argentina

Córdoba

Congreso; Reunión Anual de la Asociación Argentina de Economía Política; 2022

Asociación Argentina de Economía Política

This paper constitutes an improved and upgraded version of a research in progress whose main purpose is toexamine the impact of macroeconomic fluctuations on the application of new import restrictive measures forArgentina over the years 1989?2019.It uses quarterly available data for Argentina to estimate the impact of macroeconomic shocks and exchangerate movements on protectionist policies over the analyzed period.While part of the empirical literature in this latitude is devoted to the analysis of the primary determinants ofsuch protectionist measures, there is not any domestic effort linking the imposition of new import restrictions tomacroeconomics shocks as we shall explore in this paper. I consider this analysis is important because we canbetter address the relationship between business cycles, exchange rates and import restriction and capture theprecise timing of any trade policy changes taking place during the cycles of the businesses.