U.S. – Italy commodity trade and the J-curve: new evidence from asymmetry analysis

Previous studies that tried to assess the J-curve phenomenon for Italy employed linear models and found little support for the phenomenon. In this paper we employ nonlinear models and estimate asymmetric J-curve effects for each of the 58 industries that trade between Italy and the United States. From estimates of the linear and nonlinear models we found support for the J-curve effect in 12 industries. The largest industry with 11.7% trade share was subject to the J-curve effect from the nonlinear model. Estimates of the nonlinear models also supported short-run asymmetric effects in 48 industries but long run asymmetric effects in 29.