Joining the World Trade Organization: What is the Impact?

Christopher Balding ()

Review of International Economics, 2010, vol. 18, issue 1, 193-206

Abstract: Research has called into question the impact of the World Trade Organization (WTO) on trade. This research, however, has been called into question on both modeling grounds for and failing to utilize comprehensive fixed effects. Others have found that when these factors are accounted for, imports rise by significant amounts. This paper seeks to reconcile these findings. I find that the WTO has a larger, though uneven, impact on exports than imports. The results indicate that the WTO frequently causes imports and exports to move in opposite directions negating any increase in overall trade. The regressions with and without fixed country effects generally demonstrate pattern consistency for generalized results that are robust to change. Owing to the finding that imports rise modestly or even fall without country effects while exports rise, the results imply that countries may not be as interested in liberalizing trade as selling to the world.

Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9396.2009.00855.x

Related works:
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:bla:reviec:v:18:y:2010:i:1:p:193-206

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0965-7576

Access Statistics for this article

Review of International Economics is currently edited by E. Kwan Choi

More articles in Review of International Economics from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().