In Fiji, imports as a share of GDP has been rising strongly, particularly over the past three decades. Over these years imports have fluctuated considerably, generally in line with fluctuations in aggregate demand. Fiji is a small island state, heavily dependent on external trade for many of our essential goods. It is vital, therefore to always ensure that we have adequate foreign reserves to p...

Policy-makers and analysts are often concerned with the effect of tariff reductions, as part of trade liberalisation, on the volume of imports, and in particular adverse effects on domestic import-competing sectors. While there is limited evidence at an aggregate country level that imports increase following trade liberalisation, there is very little empirical evidence at a sector level. In the...

Does Japanese trade in manufactured goods differ from the rest-of-the world average and from the U.S.? We use a simple industry-level gravity model and 1981-1998 data to answer this question. We construct a measure of normalized imports by dividing bilateral industry-level imports by the importer's aggregate absorption and the exporter's industry output. We find that Japan imports less than oth...

one of the main principles of resistance economy, is to support domestic production and limiting imports, especially in sectors where there is the possibility of import-substituting production .this requires adjustment of exact trade policies,and to achieve this, identifying the structure of imports demand function and also price and income elasticity of import demand is necessary.this necessit...

Imports are increasingly becoming a significant source of Japan’s pork supply. Japan’s share of imports to total consumption increased from 9 percent in 1980 to 24 percent in 1990, reaching a maximum of 44 percent in 1996. Under the World Trade Organization (WTO) safeguard provisions for pork, Japan can raise its gate price by 24 percent when imports in a given quarter are 119 percent higher th...

One of the most striking aspects of the recent recession is the collapse in international trade. This paper uses disaggregated data on U.S. imports and exports to shed light on the anatomy of this collapse. We find that the recent reduction in trade relative to overall economic activity is far larger than in previous downturns. Information on quantities and prices of both domestic absorption an...

What is the effect of imports on productivity? To answer this question, we estimate a structural model of producers using product-level import data for a panel of Hungarian manufacturing firms from 1992 to 2001. In our model with heterogenous firms, producers choose to import or purchase domestically varieties of intermediate inputs. Imports affect firm productivity through expanding variety as...

Input-output models are useful tools for regional science owing to their ability to capture many of the distinguishing features of a regional economy. Since input-output tables are hard to find at the regional level, many researchers adopt nonsurvey techniques to derive regional input-output tables (RIOTs). Numerous methods have been suggested and this has spawned a stream of literature compari...

1668 The smaller the volume (or share) of imports from the trading partner, the larger the impact of a preferential trade agreement on home country welfare—because the smaller the imports, the smaller the loss in tariff revenue. And the home country is better off as a small member of a large bloc than as a large member of a small bloc. Summary findings There has been a resurgence of preferentia...