Measuring and analyzing the demand function for agricultural imports in Iraq for the period (1980-2012) in Autoregressive Distributed Lag Model(ARDL)

Abstract

Abstract:

The issues related to foreign trade is a broad field for discussions and captures the interest of economists for their contribution to the process of economic development in the economies of the countries, especially developing ones. The imports of goods and services in foreign trade constitute an important part of the local by which the economy gets goods and services that the economy cannot produce because of the incompetent base of production. Further, the demand function of imports occupied a good deal of the attention of researchers in the field of international economics for which agricultural imports constitute an important part. The reason for the interest in the subject is due to its importance for a large number of applications associated with macro-economic policies which include the effect of changes in spending resulting from changes in the exchange rate and trade policies and their effect on the trade balance of the state, as well as the degree of economic growth affect by the balance of the external sector. Autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model has been used to test for the existence of long-run and short-run relations between the demand for agricultural imports and their determinants. The results showed that the relative price variables, GDP, and foreign reserves have a significant effect in the short and long-run demand on agricultural imports, and that the relative prices are the main factor affecting the demand on agricultural imports