Do South-South Trade Agreements Increase Trade? Commodity-Level Evidence from COMESA

Anna Maria Mayda and Chad Steinberg ()
Additional contact information
Chad Steinberg: Department of Economics, Georgetown University, http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/amm223/

Working Papers from Georgetown University, Department of Economics

Abstract: South-South trade agreements are proliferating: developing countries signed 70 new agreements between 1990 and 2003. Yet the impact of these agreements is largely unknown. In this paper, we focus on the static effects of South-South preferential trade agreements that take place through changes in trade patterns. We estimate the impact of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) on Uganda's imports between 1994 and 2003. We use detailed import and tariff data at the 6-digit Harmonized System level for over 1,000 commodities. Based on a difference-indifference estimation strategy, we find evidence--in contrast to aggregate statistics--that COMESA's preferential tariff liberalization has not considerably increased Uganda's trade with member countries, on average across sectors. The effect, however, is heterogeneous across sectors. Finally, we find no evidence of trade-diversion effects.

Keywords: South-South Trade Agreements; Trade Creation; Trade Diversion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F13 F14 F15 O24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006-06-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-agr, nep-dev and nep-int
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www8.georgetown.edu/departments/economics/pdf/603.pdf Full text (application/pdf)
None

Related works:
Journal Article: Do South-South trade agreements increase trade? Commodity-level evidence from COMESA (2009)
Working Paper: Do South-South Trade Agreements Increase Trade? Commodity-Level Evidence from COMESA (2008)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:geo:guwopa:gueconwpa~06-06-03

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
Roger Lagunoff Professor of Economics Georgetown University Department of Economics Washington, DC 20057-1036
http://econ.georgetown.edu/

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Georgetown University, Department of Economics Georgetown University Department of Economics Washington, DC 20057-1036.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Marcia Suss ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).