La Condición Marshall-Lerner en la economía ecuatoriana

Abstract

Abstract: Maintaining a positive trade balance indicates the efficient application of a country's trade policies, that is, a theoretical internal economic "good health" which would be consequent on increased development. For developing countries, it is a great challenge to achieve a balance in their trade balance and much more to try to keep it positive since they are highly dependent on the primary export pattern. Faced with this question, this research analyzes the behavior of the Ecuadorian trade balance between 1970-2018 and in what way a real depreciation of its currency can affect it, this is determinedby verifying the Marshall-Lerner condition, using data of the Banco Mundial (2018) and Banco Central del Ecuador (2017) related to their main trading partners: USA, China, Spain, Colombia and Peru. The methodology used is the cointegration vector proposed by Johansen (1988), whose results indicate that the sum of the elasticities between exports and imports is negative, leaving the Marshall-Lerner condition unfulfilled for the study period, within a context of analysis general.