Investor Expectations and the North American Free Trade Agreement

The paper uses a stock market event study to examine investors' expectations of NAFTA's effect on the profitability of manufacturing industries in the USA, Canada, and Mexico. The main finding is that factor intensity, specifically a measure of the industry–wide labor–capital ratio, is the most significant determinant of excess returns. The results suggest that investors believed the NAFTA would favor industries that used abundant factors intensively and reduce profitability in industries that relied heavily on scarce factors; and, more generally, that factor intensity is a primary source of comparative advantage. No significant relationship was found between the relative scale of industries among the three countries and the NAFTA's expected influence on profitability.