A Measurement of Aggregate Trade Restrictions and Their Economic Effects
利用国际货币基金组织数据构建了新的加总贸易限制指标（MATR），覆盖1949-2019年157个国家，发现直接和间接贸易限制与产出显著收缩相关。
Abstract This study develops a new Measure of Aggregate Trade Restrictions (MATR) using data from the IMF's Annual Report on Exchange Arrangements and Exchange Restrictions. MATR is a measure of direct and indirect official government policy related to the international flow of goods and services. MATR is simple, plausible, quantitative, easily updated, based on relevant measures of trade policy and other international restrictions affecting trade (e.g., payment restrictions), and covers an unbalanced sample of up to 157 countries from 1949 to 2019. MATR is strongly correlated with, and—importantly—more comprehensive, in terms of country and time coverage, than existing measures of de jure openness; it is also granular. As such, MATR empowers empirical analysis to increase coverage in research related to trade restrictions and other trade-related openness policies. MATR is used in the study to show that direct and indirect restrictions to trade are associated with significant contractions in output.