Finance and Economics Discussion Series (FEDS)
September 2011
Plant-Level Responses to Antidumping Duties: Evidence from U.S. Manufacturers
Abstract:
This paper describes the effects of a temporary increase in tariffs on the performance and behavior of U.S. manufacturers. Using a dataset that includes the full population of U.S. manufacturing plants, I show that an apparent positive correlation between antidumping duties and traditional revenue productivity is likely misleading. For the subset of plants reporting quantity-based output data, increases in prices and markups artificially inflate the effect of antidumping duties on revenue productivity, while physical productivity actually falls. Moreover, antidumping duties allow low-productivity plants to continue producing protected products, slowing the reallocation of resources from less productive to more productive uses.
Full paper (Screen Reader Version)Keywords: Antidumping, temporary protection, heterogeneous firms, productivity
PDF: Full Paper