Gulf Cooperation Council trade integration: a new empirical examination

Walid Abdmoulah

International Journal of Trade and Global Markets, 2011, vol. 4, issue 4, 383-404

Abstract: This paper investigates GCC countries' trade integration. The gravity equation is estimated using Panel Zero-Inflated Negative Binomial specification and COMTRADE aggregate and disaggregated flows. Results confirm GCC countries' integration deficit on exports side, while being integrated to some extent on imports side and on some particular commodities. Moreover, economic size and distance differently affect trade according to its direction and the nature of goods. Finally, two major obstacles to integration are highlighted: ?Limited trade complementarity induced by excess reliance on oil and lagged industrialisation. ?Intensive trade with industrialised and some developing countries at the expense of GCC countries.

Keywords: GCC; Gulf Cooperation Council; Arab States; CCASG; Persian Gulf; Arabian Peninsula; Bahrain; Kuwait; Oman; Qatar; Saudi Arabia; United Arab Emirates; intra-regional trade; gravity models; panel models; zero-inflated models; negative binomial models; COMTRADE; UN; United Nations; commodity trade statistics; statistical databases; aggregate flows; disaggregated flows; integration deficits; exports; imports; economic size; economic distance; trade complementarity; oil; lagged industrialisation; intensive trade; industrialised countries; developing countries; globalisation; global markets. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=42863 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:ids:ijtrgm:v:4:y:2011:i:4:p:383-404

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Trade and Global Markets from Inderscience Enterprises Ltd
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sarah Parker ().