آیا پیمان تجاری منطقه ای به نفع قشر فقیر می باشد؟ نمونه ای از جمهوری مرکزی جمهوری دومینیکن - توافقنامه تجارت آزاد آمریکا در نیکاراگوئه

This paper provides an ex-ante assessment of the poverty and income distribution impacts of the Central American Free Trade Area agreement on Nicaragua. A general equilibrium macro model is used to simulate trade reform scenarios and estimate their price effects, while a micro module maps these price changes into real income changes at the individual household level. The final impact on poverty is not too large, but its dispersion across households is significant and should be considered when designing compensatory policies. A main policy message is that Nicaragua should consider enlarging its own liberalization to countries other than the United States to boost trade-induced poverty reductions.

The debate on the Dominican Republic—Central American Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA)1 between the United States, five Central American countries (Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua), and the Dominican Republic has been heated by the usual arguments surrounding trade deals. A seemingly persuasive argument against CAFTA is that although new jobs in Central America may be generated, this may be done at the expense of American jobs and to the detriment of local workers hired in jobs that do not comply with minimum labor standards.2 This argument has limited validity because it considers only the static distributional effects of trade integration. Similarly, arguments in favor of CAFTA or other similar trade deals are also often partial for they normally assume that freer trade indisputably favors growth and that growth trickles down to the poor. A careful assessment of whether trade reform can be beneficial to poor people and what can be done (at least in the short to medium term) to correct potential anti-poor effects is needed to settle the debate, but it is also a difficult task.

This paper analyzes the income distribution and poverty impacts of various trade options currently under the scrutiny of Central American policy makers. In particular, it assesses for Nicaragua the poverty effects of the DR-CAFTA recently signed between five Central American countries plus the Dominican Republic and the United States. The methodology adopted here relies on a general equilibrium macro model used to simulate various trade reform scenarios and to estimate the price effects of these scenarios, and a micro module which maps the aggregate general equilibrium price changes onto variations of real incomes at the individual household levels