Why ‘Buy American’ is a bad idea but politicians still like it

Why ‘Buy American’ is a bad idea but politicians still like it

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Article ID: iaor201111980
Volume: 44
Issue: 3
Start Page Number: 838
End Page Number: 858
Publication Date: Aug 2011
Journal: Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'conomique
Authors: ,
Keywords: politics, government, statistics: inference
Abstract:

When the world economy was recently hit by a severe recession, governments all over the world reacted by initiating stimulus packages. Some countries (among them, most notably, China and the US) tried to put special emphasis on their home industries by including ‘Buy National’ clauses into the stimulus package. By analyzing the dynamics of transitory changes of trade barriers as a short‐run response to an economic downturn, we show that beggar‐thy‐neighbour policies do not work. We then come up with two rationales that help us understand why countries nevertheless consider protectionism to be a good response to a recession: (i) the lobbying of domestic, non‐exporting firms, and (ii) the relationship between vulnerability, the degree of openness and loss aversion of consumers.

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