Do Trade Agreements Stimulate International Trade Differently? Evidence from 296 Trade Agreements

In a seminal article, Rose (2004) found that the assumed positive impact of the WTO on international trade was questionable. This finding has been scrutinised and modified in subsequent research, using different data sets, econometric methods and separating the WTO from other forms of trade agreements. A key characteristic of the subsequent literature is the rather simplistic way in which trade agreements are treated whereby all trade agreements are lumped together. Trade agreements come, however, in many different forms and shapes. This study addresses these differences in trade agreements. Using a unique database of 296 trade agreements, we distinguish 17 trade‐related policy domains and indicate whether the agreements contain legally enforceable commitments. This extensive and novel taxonomy of trade agreements enables us to allow for the possible heterogeneity of the impact of trade agreements on international trade. Using a gravity model, we find that trade agreement heterogeneity indeed matters for international trade and that countries experience significant trade increases due to comprehensive trade agreements even if not all participants are in the WTO.     

The effects of trade agreements on the growth of major Latin American economies

While the connection between trade openness and economic growth is generally assumed to be positive, empirically, it is not clearly demonstrable. Examinations of the relationship between trade and growth have taken a number of approaches, differing both in the empirical methods, as well as the proxies employed for trade openness, trade liberalization, and growth, but results have been decidedly mixed. Our research differs from prior studies in that it does not examine whether trade policy, trade liberalization or the level of trade itself enhances GDP; but rather whether participating in a specific type of trade agreement/union and/or the number of trade agreements to which a given country or region belongs enhances a country's level of growth. For this purpose, we study the relationship between trade agreements and growth for 18 Latin American countries between 1960 and 2008. Empirical analysis uses an adaptation of the neoclassical Solow growth model. Even though supporters of globalization advance the notion that involvement in trade agreements will help a country's economy, our findings suggest that that may not be consistently so.     

论国际投资协定中的环境规则及其演进——兼评析中国国际投资协定的变化及立法

为了平衡投资自由化和环境保护间冲突,早期的环境条约意图规范加入投资规则。晚近以来,在国际投资协定中纳入环境规则已经成为新式投资协定发展的重要特色。从国际投资协定纳入环境规则的立法模式看,经历了从投资协定到自由贸易协定的多元化发展;从立法内容看,已经形成从实体规范和程序规范的日趋完善的发展;从规范对象看,意图直接规范跨国公司的倾向已经显露。我国的投资协定在国际背景下也产生了重要的变化,但是无论是国际和国内两个层次上都存在不足,需进一步完善。     

Increasing returns, multinationals and geography of preferential trade agreements

This paper uses a model of horizontal multinational enterprises to explore the relationship between transportation costs and trade policy cooperation. Tariffs have the effect of attracting foreign direct investment to the benefit of consumers in the host country. As transport costs fall, the incentive to impose tariffs falls and the benefits to cooperation rise. Thus, in a repeated game in which cooperation is limited by a self-enforcement constraint, a reduction in transport costs facilitates free trade. This logic is applied to a three-country model to examine preferential trade agreements. It is found that if any country is too distant from the others, then global free trade is not attainable. Rather, if two of the countries are within a critical distance of each other and distant from the third country, then the unique outcome is an exclusive free trade agreement between the two adjacent countries. Thus, the model predicts a strong regional bias in preferential trade agreements.     

环境对国际贸易的积极作用和消极影响

环境和贸易之间有着复杂的关系和相互影响，一个领域的政策措施会不断地对另一个领域产生显著而重要的影响。环境对贸易既有积极影响又有消极作用。一方面环境为贸易的可持续发展提供了基础，另一方面，严格的环境保护政策，会给发展中国家的贸易带来不利影响。我国要保持贸易利益和促使经济持续发展，就必须认识到环境和贸易的密切关系，趋利避害，采取必要的应对和发展措施。     

标准对国际贸易影响效应的研究及政策借鉴

随着科学技术的发展和经济全球化进程的加快,标准对国际贸易的影响效应越来越显著。文章搜集了不同研究对象国家1996～2005年超过的60个产业的标准和国际贸易数据,建立面板数据回归模型并进行多元回归分析,得出标准对在发展中国家与发达国家之间以及发达国家之间的国际贸易的影响效应及其影响机制。在此基础上提出制定国家标准化工作中长期战略、参与国际标准化组织和国际标准的制定工作、有针对性地开展国家标准化工作等方面对我国标准化活动的政策建议。     

Negotiating free trade

We develop a dynamic bargaining model in which a leading country endogenously decides whether to sequentially negotiate free trade agreements with subsets of countries or engage in simultaneous multilateral bargaining with all countries at once. We show how the structure of coalition externalities shapes the choice between sequential and multilateral bargaining, and we identify circumstances in which the grand coalition is the equilibrium outcome, leading to worldwide free trade. A model of international trade is then used to illustrate equilibrium outcomes and how they depend on the structure of trade and protection. Global free trade is not achieved when the political-economy motive for protection is sufficiently large. Furthermore, the model generates both “building bloc” and “stumbling bloc” effects of preferential trade agreements. In particular, we describe an equilibrium in which global free trade is attained only when preferential trade agreements are permitted to form (a building bloc effect), and an equilibrium in which global free trade is attained only when preferential trade agreements are forbidden (a stumbling bloc effect). The analysis identifies conditions under which each of these outcomes emerges.     

Mars or Mercury redux: The geopolitics of bilateral trade agreements

We analyse the role of economic and security considerations in bilateral trade agreements. We use the pre‐World War I period to test whether trade agreements are governed by standard gravity variables, or by instead—or in addition—geopolitical factors. While we like others find support for standard gravity variables, we also find that defence pacts boost the probability of trade agreements by as much as 20 percentage points. Our estimates imply that were the U.S. to alienate its geopolitical allies, the likelihood and benefits of successful bilateral agreements would fall significantly. Trade creation from an agreement between the U.S. and E.U. countries would decline by about 0.6 per cent of total U.S. exports.     

Book review

The paper develops a general equilibrium model of international production and trade. Technology is carried across borders by multinational producers and the set of technologies being used in a particular country is endogenous. Production locations are chosen based on the costs of production and getting the product to market. A producer may manufacture its product in its home country, target market country, or a third country. Estimated model parameters describe the states of technology in different countries, barriers to international investment, and trade costs. It is found that the barriers to international trade and investment are highly correlated. The model is used to measure the extent of technology diffusion across countries, study the relationship between international production and trade, investigate the effects of free-trade agreements (FTAs) on offshoring, and to quantify the welfare effects of international production and trade.     

The effect of within-country inequality on international trade and investment agreements

There is anecdotal evidence suggesting that those losing from globalization influence policy makers to decrease the openness of their countries to globalization, as evidenced by signing international trade and investment agreements. Surprisingly, this influence has never been examined empirically. This study provides novel empirical evidence demonstrating that greater within-country inequality, our proxy for 'perceived losses' from globalization, decreases countries' propensity to sign regional trade and investment agreements. Our findings support the argument that the existence of 'losers' from globalization can be detrimental for continued globalization. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first extensive econometric empirical evidence of the influence of within-country inequality on countries' willingness to sign international trade and investment agreements, as means to increase their global economic integration.     

Convergence in the Americas: Some Lessons from the DR‐CAFTA Process

The proliferation of trade agreements in the Americas is a major cause for concern as it might fragment or inhibit the emergence of a hemispheric trading system. In addition to establishing a free trade area between the US and six countries in Latin America, the DR‐CAFTA consolidates a set of trade arrangements among those six Latin American countries. The approaches and techniques employed to achieve this consolidation should be studied by policy analysts and negotiators of broader hemispheric‐wide negotiations since the DR‐CAFTA is in fact a microcosm of the spaghetti bowl of trade agreements now existing in the Americas. This paper points out the potential consequences of the proliferation of trade agreements in the Americas and provides an analysis of the convergence techniques and approaches used in the DR‐CAFTA, in particular in the areas of market access and rules of origin.     

转基因农产品国际贸易争端问题研究综述

基于自己的生物技术研究、应用水平、农业发展程度和在国际贸易体系中的地位及作用,世界各国对转基因农产品的研究、应用、生产和贸易采取了不同的立场和政策,造成国际贸易秩序的失控与混乱。在这样的背景下,如何厘清国际贸易现状,辨识贸易争端的根源,寻找解决问题的对策,对促进国际贸易可持续发展具有重要的现实意义。     

Regional Trade Agreements in Mediterranean Area: Econometric Analysis by Static Gravity Model

Since the mid-1980s, there was the rise of a new wave of economic regionalism in the world economy with the spread of free trade agreements (FTAs). A key objective of free trade involves developing commercial exchanges between member countries. The gravity model is a vital tool to explain the bilateral trade data against the variables of the relative size of the pair of countries implicated in the trade: distance, common border, and language and models for each of the FTAs. This article focuses on studying the influence of FTAs in the Mediterranean countries in which we integrate the role of regional dummy EU (15), EMU (euro zone), the AMU and AGADIR agreement in trade flows. The use of regional variables are designed to determine whether its FTAs contribute to the creation of trade diversion. This study examines a cross-section and panel of 27 countries for 1980–2011. The results show the existence of a strong relationship between the factors of FTAs and trade flows.     

International Growth Spillovers,Geography and Infrastructure

There is significant academic evidence that growth in one country has a positive impact on growth in neighbouring countries. This paper contributes to this literature by analysing the heterogeneous strength of growth spillovers across world regions and by investigating the contribution of transport and communication infrastructure to explain this heterogeneity and promote neighbourhood effects. By defining neighbourhood on the basis of membership of regional trade agreements, we focus on spillovers that work through regional integration and trade. The analysis finds significant evidence for heterogeneity in growth spillovers, which are strong between OECD countries and essentially absent in sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA). We further find strong interaction between infrastructure and being a landlocked country. This suggests that growth spillovers from regional ‘success stories’ in SSA and other lagging world regions will depend on first strengthening the channels through which such spillovers can spread – most importantly connective infrastructure such as transport and telecommunication links.     

Trade Liberalisation: The Effects of Free Trade Agreements on the Competitiveness of the Dairy Sector

In recent years, preferential trade agreements (PTAs), free trade agreements (FTAs) in particular, have proliferated while WTO negotiations have stagnated. This paper contributes to the literature on trade liberalisation and the agricultural sector by analysing the effects of FTAs on the competitiveness of the dairy sector across 76 countries and over a 20‐year period from 1990 to 2009. With a longitudinal econometric model, the results demonstrate that when a country has a revealed comparative advantage in the dairy sector, FTAs positively influence several indicators of competitiveness in the dairy sector, such as production, market share and trade balance. The results also indicate that multilateral FTAs are more beneficial than bilateral FTAs. There is strong empirical evidence that FTAs are more beneficial to developed countries than to developing countries. There is no statistical evidence to support the hypothesis about a relationship between FTAs and farm‐gate price.     

International Trade Agreements and International Migration

Despite large potential economic gains, bilateral and multilateral negotiations focusing on liberalisation of migration have not shared the high profile of international trade negotiations and agreements. Migration and trade have been traditionally viewed rather separately and the relevance of the many, and complex, interdependencies has been given remarkably little attention in the literature to date. In this article, we focus on the two‐way interaction between international migration and agreements designed to enhance cross‐border trade and investment. Liberalisation of international trade in services and in the movement of people potentially offers much greater economic gains than liberalisation of remaining barriers to goods trade. However, progress within multilateral frameworks is fraught with difficulty. The World Trade Organization’s General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) has yielded little real progress so far and negotiations within more flexible unilateral and bilateral frameworks are likely to be more successful in liberalising the movement of labour. We discuss a range of specific examples, focusing particularly on the interesting case of New Zealand. We find that trade agreements are increasingly including agreements on migration, though typically favouring temporary migration and involving numerically modest quotas. We conclude that migration regulatory frameworks are likely to be further and more strongly linked to trade and investment agreements in the future, particularly given changing economic and demographic forces. The primary focus of migration policies may nonetheless remain different from that of trade policies. While further migration liberalisation is likely to be through bilateral and regional agreements, it will be important to try to lock in the gains of such agreements, while simultaneously working to consolidating these in a way that will help to facilitate future multilateral agreement.     

服务贸易协定承诺的覆盖率对制造业增加值出口的影响

文章借助WTO与世界银行联合建立的Integrated Trade Intelligence Portal数据库构建服务贸易协定承诺的覆盖率指标,选取Trade in value-added数据库2005年至2015年27个国家(地区)制造业增加值出口的国内增加值和国外增加值数据,通过实证分析,得出结论:(1)服务贸易协定生效在短时间内对制造业国内增加值和国外增加值出口存在显著的促进效应,且随着生效年限增加,促进效应也在加强;(2)服务贸易协定承诺的覆盖率越高,对制造业增加值出口的促进作用越强。根据国家收入水平对服务贸易协定进行分类的异质性分析结果显示:(1)发达国家(地区)与其他国家(地区)签订服务贸易协定对其制造业增加值出口的提升没有显著正向影响,甚至表现出负面影响;(2)发展中国家(地区)之间签订的服务贸易协定能够在生效2年后显著促进发展中国家(地区)制造业国外增加值出口。     

论环境标志制度影响下的国际贸易与国际市场营销

环境标志制度为越来越多的国家接受和采用 ,对国际贸易和国际市场营销产生了重大影响。一般的研究将这两个紧密联系的经济活动分别加以讨论 ,难免有失偏颇。本文则将国际贸易与国际市场营销结合起来 ,研究环境标志制度对二者的共同影响。     

知识产权保护对国际贸易的影响及中国的对策

随着经济全球化的深入,知识产权保护的国际贸易化特征凸显,发达国家与发展中国家在与贸易有关的知识产权保护领域的矛盾与冲突加剧,国际市场及利益分配格局发生改变.充分认识知识产权保护对国际贸易的影响并制定相应的知识产权策略,是中国以及广大发展中国家的重要课题.