| Sumario: | Studies of the demand for imports have generally used the traditional form of the estimating equation, namely one that relates the quantity of imports to the ratio of import prices to domestic prices and the level of domestic real income. This type of equation can be criticized for not enabling a distinction to be made between effects of cyclical factors and those factors that are secular in nature on the level of imports, since real income appears as the only demand variable in the equation. Effects of cyclical factors may well be substantially different from effects of the secular factors and therefore using current real income, as an explanatory variable would perhaps at best only capture the cyclical influences on imports. The purpose of the paper has been to estimate a relatively simple demand function for imports for 14 countries, with a view to distinguishing between the cyclical and trend influences on the quantity of imports. Results of the exercise can now be briefly summarized. First, the author found that the estimated price elasticity of imports had the expected negative sign at the 10% level in 50% of the countries in the sample.
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