اثرات ساختار تجارت از موافقت نامه های تجاری منطقه ای درون زا

This paper formulates an empirical model to estimate the impact of endogenous new regional trade agreement (RTA) membership on trade structure. The likelihood of new RTA membership is influenced by economic fundamentals such as country size, factor endowments, and trade and investment costs. In a sample of country-pairs covering mainly the OECD economies we find a particularly strong effect of endogenous RTAs on intra-industry trade in a difference-in-difference analysis based on matching techniques. The associated trade volume effects are similar to the ones found in previous research on the effects of endogenous RTAs. Overall, this indicates that RTA membership might reduce inter-industry trade not only in relative but also in absolute terms and that the trade volume effect is due to the associated growth in trade within industries.

The voluminous literature on the consequences of regional trade agreements (RTAs) for welfare and trade is one of the central building blocks of research in international economics. While it is well understood theoretically under which conditions positive welfare effects of RTAs arise, empirical research has treated these agreements as exogenous for more than four decades. Implicitly, country-pairs have been viewed as being randomly assigned rather than self-selected into RTAs. Only recently have economists paid attention to endogeneity when analyzing trade volume effects (Baier and Bergstrand, in press, Baier and Bergstrand,2007 and Magee, in press). This line of research indicates that (i) RTAs foster bilateral trade on average when controlling for endogeneity and (ii) their exogenous treatment is not justified from an econometric viewpoint and leads to downward biased estimates of their impact on trade volumes.

A great deal of progress has been made in recent years in the empirical analysis of the impact RTAs on trade. In particular, issues with endogenous selection into RTAs have come into the limelight. Recent research has identified a significantly positive endogenous treatment effect of RTAs on trade volumes and a potentially sizable downward bias of the corresponding exogenous treatment effect. While fundamental issues about the trade volume effects of RTAs seem to be settled, at least in qualitative terms, it has not yet been asked whether the RTA-induced increase in trade volumes is due mainly to increasing inter-versus intra-industry trade. Yet this may be of crucial interest not only from an economic but also from a political point of view. In its early stages, research on intra-industry was motivated by concerns about the potentially detrimental effects of the formation of the European Community on labour in the capital-abundant integrating economies. The empirical finding of a sizable share in intra-industry trade not only triggered research on New Trade Theory but also helped alleviate fears of job losses associated with regional integration.