In: Economics
According to the Classical small open economy model, what happens to domestic national saving, investment, the trade balance, and the real exchange rate in response to each of the following events? Draw a loanable funds market diagram and a net exports diagram to illustrate your answer in each case. (For these diagrams, let’s assume that the country starts out running a current account surplus and capital account deficit, as in the examples in class.)
(a) The introduction of a stylish new domestically-produced electric car makes some consumers switch from buying a foreign-produced car to buying a domestic one.
(b)The country imposes a tariff on foreign-produced goods. (For simplicity, suppose that the effect of the tariff is the following: at every value of the real exchange rate, the demand for domestic goods is higher and the demand for foreign goods is lower.) You might find it surprising that the equilibrium trade balance doesn’t change in this example; briefly give some intuition for why the Classical Small Open Economy Model implies this result.