This has been accepted and published in Empirical Economics, Papadopoulos, A. (2021) Trade liberalization and growth: a quantile moderator for Hoyos’ (2021) replication study of Estevadeordal and Taylor (2013). Empir Econ, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00181-021-02159-4.
Estevadeordal and Taylor (2013) is unique in that the authors dug deeply into raw data to construct indicators of tariff reductions in the 1990’s for several countries. Hoyos (2021) is a “critical replication” study that challenges their main finding (that tariff reduction accelerated growth in the 1990’s), on account of the empirical exercise being “non-robust”.
My paper is indeed a moderator in this debate, because it shows that the non-robustness results of Hoyos are valid, but they do not invalidate the overall conclusion of Estevadeordal and Taylor. In order to understand this, one should apply quantile regression, which is what I do.
The abstract reads:
We examine whether Hoyos’ (Empir Econ, 2021) critical replication of Estevadeordal and Taylor (Rev Econ Stat 95(5):1669–1690, 2013) that dealt with trade liberalization and growth, does provide, as the author claims, clear evidence that the estimation results and the conclusions of the original should be discarded, the first as “nonrobust,” the second as relying on the former. We find that robustness is indeed an issue. We correct for it using quantile regression and we obtain results that explain both papers and support a modified argument that tariff reduction in the 1990’s contributed to growth acceleration, when other determinants of growth were conducive to such acceleration.