Protective Trade Policies ‘Reduce’ Employment: A Dynamic Optimization Approach

Using a competitive two-country two-commodity monetary model with optimizing agents in which persistent unemployment arises, this paper examines the effects of trade restrictions on consumption and employment in the two countries. When facing unemployment, a country tends to impose an import restriction so that domestic firms will increase production and raise employment. However, this policy improves the current account and hence its currency appreciates, causing its products to lose international competitiveness. Therefore, employment and consumption eventually decrease in the country while in the foreign country its currency depreciates and hence employment and consumption increase. JEL classification: F13, F41, F42