each year subject to an imposed import restriction.

Figure 10 illustrates interesting features on the use of these TTBs over time. First, there are spikes for the United States in 1992 and 2001 and for the EU in 2001; empirical evidence described in more detail below links significant increases in TTB use to recessionary periods (especially unemployment rate increases) as well as real exchange rate appreciations. Second, India began using TTBs in 1992 and China in 1997; import coverage levels for India exhibit a consistently upward trend. Third, for China, the EU, and US, the significant deviation in 2001-2003 between the ‘all TTB’ series and ‘antidumping only’ series reflects the previously discussed global safeguards that each applied over steel products. Fourth, there is a slight increase for these economies in the ‘flow’ of products subject to new TTB investigations during the Great Recession period of 20082009, but it is not nearly as sizeable as in other periods of macroeconomic downturn.

To what extent has research linked changes in TTB levels to macroeconomic shocks such as real exchange rate appreciations and increases in the unemployment rate? Furthermore, can this partially explain why applied MFN tariffs were not responsive to the massive aggregate-level fluctuations taking place during the Great Recession, as discussed in Section 2.1? Knetter and Prusa (2003) and Irwin (2005) provide evidence from data through the 1990s that exchange rate appreciation significantly impacts antidumping use for a number of high-income economies. More recently, Bown and Crowley (2013a, 2014) confirm these results in the more comprehensive TTB data in cross-country samples of five high-income economies and 13 emerging economies, respectively, covering the period of 1988-2010. They find for the EU and the US, the flexibility of the real exchange rate, and in particular the sharp depreciations that subsequently took place (after initial sharp appreciations in 2009) likely contributed to the dampening pressure on demands for import protection during the Great Recession. Second, over time, the emerging economies’ collective TTB responsiveness to macroeconomic shocks (including also changes in the unemployment rate and real GDP growth) has been increasing, and thus mimicking the TTB counter-cyclical responsiveness of high-income economies. Finally, there is some evidence from emerging economies that as the tariff binding overhang diminishes over time, countries substitute away from adjusting their MFN applied tariffs and toward implementing TTBs.

The next of our major questions is whether, when countries apply import protection via TTBs, they do so differentially across sectors. Figure 11 illustrates the breakdown for the major TTB users and presents clear evidence of significant variation across industries.<sup>55</sup> Furthermore, do countries apply TTBs in the same sectors in which they have high tariffs? A comparison of Figure 11 with Figures 2, 3, and 7, suggests no clear pattern as to whether TTBs were more or less likely to arise in the sectors that were still subject to high average tariffs, high incidence of tariff peaks, or high frequency of specific duties. For example, agriculture during 1995-2013 was not a frequent target of TTBs across using countries. For other sectors, such as

> 55In particular, we provide figures for countries for which 2.8 percent or more of their HS06 lines were subject to a TTB during this period. We also group countries somewhat differently so as to make more direct comparisons between certain pairings that might be expected to have common determinants of policy, including those arising for institutional reasons under an FTA or customs union.

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