 The Simple Analytics of Trade Creation and DiversionAlan Deardorff and Rishi Sharma No 670, Working Papers from Research Seminar in International Economics, University of Michigan Abstract: This paper conducts analysis of a free trade agreement within a simple model of partial equilibrium, linear supply and demand, and circumstances such that trade flows are positive in all equilibria considered. The results illustrate the close connection, on the one hand, between trade creation and the benefit to the FTA-forming countries and to the world, and, on the other hand, the equally close connection between trade diversion and the harm to outside countries and potentially both the participating countries and the world. In addition, by considering a second case in which a country that already has one FTA adds another, we show that the new FTA causes trade to be diverted from its prior partner, an effect that we call trade reversion. It turns out that trade reversion causes neither harm nor benefit to the importing country, and when we look at world welfare, if trade reversion is equal to trade diversion their two effects cancel out, leading the effect on world welfare to be a simple function of the amount of trade creation and the size of the tariff. Keywords: FTAs; Trade creation; trade diversion (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mie:wpaper:670 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Working Papers from Research Seminar in International Economics, University of Michigan Contact information at EDIRC. |
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