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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.

Currencies and Exchange Rates --- Economic Theory and Research --- Exports --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Free Trade --- Gravity model --- International Economics & Trade --- Law and Development --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Public Sector Development --- Regional Trade --- Regional Trade Agreements --- Rules of origin --- Trade agreement --- Trade creation --- Trade Effect --- Trade effects --- Trade flows --- Trade Law --- Trade Policy

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This paper estimates a model of a government making trade policy adjustments under a self-enforcing trade agreement in the presence of economic shocks. The empirical model is motivated by the formal theories of cooperative trade agreements. The authors find evidence that United States' use of its antidumping policy during 1997-2006 is consistent with increases in time-varying "cooperative" tariffs, where the likelihood of antidumping is increasing in the size of unexpected import surges, decreasing in the volatility of imports, and decreasing in the elasticities of import demand and export supply. The analysis finds additional support for the theory that some US antidumping use is consistent with cooperative behavior through a second empirical examination of how trading partners responded to these new US tariffs. Even after controlling for factors such as the expected cost and benefit to filing a WTO dispute or engaging in antidumping retaliation, the analysis find that trading partners are less likely to challenge such "cooperative" US antidumping tariffs that were imposed under terms-of-trade pressure suggested by the theory.

Antidumping --- Antidumping duties --- Antidumping policies --- Antidumping policy --- Bilateral trade --- Currencies and Exchange Rates --- Domestic industries --- Economic Theory & Research --- Export supply --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Free Trade --- International Economics and Trade --- International Trade and Trade Rules --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Market access --- Tariff reduction --- Terms of trade --- Trade agreement --- Trade agreements --- Trade barriers --- Trade effect --- Trade flows --- Trade motives --- Trade policies --- Trade Policy --- World trade --- World trade organization

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

This paper estimates a model of a government making trade policy adjustments under a self-enforcing trade agreement in the presence of economic shocks. The empirical model is motivated by the formal theories of cooperative trade agreements. The authors find evidence that United States' use of its antidumping policy during 1997-2006 is consistent with increases in time-varying "cooperative" tariffs, where the likelihood of antidumping is increasing in the size of unexpected import surges, decreasing in the volatility of imports, and decreasing in the elasticities of import demand and export supply. The analysis finds additional support for the theory that some US antidumping use is consistent with cooperative behavior through a second empirical examination of how trading partners responded to these new US tariffs. Even after controlling for factors such as the expected cost and benefit to filing a WTO dispute or engaging in antidumping retaliation, the analysis find that trading partners are less likely to challenge such "cooperative" US antidumping tariffs that were imposed under terms-of-trade pressure suggested by the theory.

Antidumping --- Antidumping duties --- Antidumping policies --- Antidumping policy --- Bilateral trade --- Currencies and Exchange Rates --- Domestic industries --- Economic Theory & Research --- Export supply --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Free Trade --- International Economics and Trade --- International Trade and Trade Rules --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Market access --- Tariff reduction --- Terms of trade --- Trade agreement --- Trade agreements --- Trade barriers --- Trade effect --- Trade flows --- Trade motives --- Trade policies --- Trade Policy --- World trade --- World trade organization