TY - BOOK ID - 133967894 TI - Evaluating the Trade Effect of Developing Regional Trade Agreements : A Semi-Parametric Approach PY - 2007 PB - Washington, D.C., The World Bank, DB - UniCat KW - Currencies and Exchange Rates KW - Economic Theory and Research KW - Exports KW - Finance and Financial Sector Development KW - Free Trade KW - Gravity model KW - International Economics & Trade KW - Law and Development KW - Macroeconomics and Economic Growth KW - Public Sector Development KW - Regional Trade KW - Regional Trade Agreements KW - Rules of origin KW - Trade agreement KW - Trade creation KW - Trade Effect KW - Trade effects KW - Trade flows KW - Trade Law KW - Trade Policy UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:133967894 AB - Many recent papers have pointed to ambiguous trade effects of developing regional trade agreements (RTAs), calling for a reassessment of their economic merits. The author focuses on seven such agreements currently in force in Sub-Saharan Africa (ECOWAS and SADC), Asia (AFTA and SAPTA) and Latin America (CACM, CAN, and MERCOSUR), estimating their impacts on their members' trade flows. Instead of the usual dummy variables for RTAs, he proposes a variable taking into account the number of years of membership. He then combines a gravity model with kernel estimation techniques to capture the non-monotonic trade effects while imposing minimal structure on the model. The results indicate that except for SAPTA, these RTAs have had a positive impact on their members' intra-trade over the estimation period (1960-99). AFTA seems to be the most successful among them, with an estimated positive impact on its members' imports from the rest of the world (hence no trade diversion), but its impact on their exports to the rest of the world is rather limited. During its first 10 years of existence, ECOWAS appears to have had a positive impact on its members' imports from the rest of the world (hence no trade diversion), but this positive impact vanished over time. SAPTA's negative impact on its members' intra-trade is probably an implicit effect of the India-Pakistan tensions over the estimation period. ER -