EU Trade Preferences and Export Diversification

Maria Persson and Fredrik Wilhelmsson ()
Additional contact information
Fredrik Wilhelmsson: AgriFood Economics Centre, Lund University, Postal: AgriFood Economics Centre, School of Economics and Management, Lund University, Box 730, S-220 07 Lund, Sweden, http://www.agrifood.se/staffDetail.aspx?fKeyID=40

No 2013:32, Working Papers from Lund University, Department of Economics

Abstract: Since at least the 1960s, the European Union (EU) has offered various kinds of non-reciprocal trade preferences for developing countries. Originally, these trade preferences had at least two policy goals: (i) to increase export volumes for developing countries and thereby boost their export earnings, and (ii) to facilitate export diversification. While extensive research has confirmed that the first of these goals is typically met, the second goal seems to have been largely forgotten by researchers as well as in policy circles. The aim of this paper is therefore to analyse the impact of the EU’s non-reciprocal trade preferences for developing countries on export diversification. Our estimation results suggest that some trade preference programs, such as the Generalised Scheme of Preferences (GSP), are associated with increasing ranges of export products. By contrast, preferences offered to Mediterranean countries typically have no significant effects, and African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) preferences actually have negative effects toward the end of our time period, suggesting that ACP countries may respond to preferences by specializing into fewer goods.

Keywords: Export diversification; non-reciprocal trade preferences; GSP; ACP; EU (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F13 F15 O24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2013-09-17
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-int, nep-lam, nep-ltv and nep-neu
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://project.nek.lu.se/publications/workpap/papers/WP13_32.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: EU Trade Preferences and Export Diversification (2016)
Working Paper: EU Trade Preferences and Export Diversification (2013)
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:hhs:lunewp:2013_032

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Lund University, Department of Economics School of Economics and Management, Box 7080, S-22007 Lund, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Iker Arregui Alegria ().