آیا مقررات غیر متعارف در موافقتنامه های تجاری منطقه ای موجب افزایش تجارت بین المللی می شود؟

The scope of recent regional trade agreements (RTAs) has become much broader than before by the inclusion of nonconventional provisions such as those on competition policy and intellectual property rights protection. This paper empirically examines the extent to which those nonconventional provisions in RTAs enhance international trade between RTA member countries by estimating a gravity equation with detailed information on the contents of RTAs. We find that the provision for competition policy has the largest effect on international trade, followed by the government procurement provision. These two provisions have significant and positive impacts on intensive margin intensive margin (trade values per variety) and extensive margin (number of varieties traded)

The scope of recent regional trade agreements (RTAs) has significantly broadened. RTAs used to be signed to primarily reduce and eventually eliminate tariff rates. Although the elimination of tariffs continues to be one of the major purposes, new RTAs tend to include provisions for various policies such as the mobility of persons, government procurement, competition policy, intellectual property rights protection, E-commerce, dispute settlement, labor standards, environmental policy, technical cooperation, institutional mechanisms, and so on. The coverage and depth of these provisions go beyond those in WTO-based agreements such as the Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) or the Agreement on Trade- Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). For example, since only a handful of countries have signed GPA, RTAs with specific provisions for government procurement can lower barriers in those countries that have not signed the GPA.

The scope of recent regional trade agreements (RTAs) has become much broader by including several provisions such as competition policy or intellectual property and by going beyond WTO obligations. Such “extended RTAs” not only reduce tariff rates but also enhance the cooperation and linkage in various economic fields among member countries. If the existence of each provision has a significant and varying degree of trade creation effects, such differences in RTAs’ scope can lead to heterogeneous effects on trade among RTAs even though the magnitude of the tariff reduction is identical. Furthermore, if each RTA provision has different effects on the intensive and extensive margins, we may need to design RTAs that maximize increases in trade values in order to broaden political support for the conclusion of RTAs. This paper sets ou