Trade-creation and trade-diversion effects of regional trade arrangements: low-income countries

Mamit Deme and Estrella R. Ndrianasy

Applied Economics, 2017, vol. 49, issue 22, 2188-2202

Abstract: Although the number of regional trade arrangements (RTAs) among the lowest-income developing countries is surging, the literature on their welfare effects is still scarce, and the few that exist fail to provide conclusive results. Furthermore, these RTAs are dominated by countries with a small share of total exports destined for intraregional trade flows. Our study focuses on the welfare effects of RTAs (pertaining to trade creation and trade diversion) among this group of countries. We use a theoretically justified gravity model to estimate welfare effects, focusing on trade creation and trade diversion and deviating from the norm in related studies, accounting for heterogeneity in third countries. Using ECOWAS as a sample, we estimate welfare effects on 1992–2012 annual bilateral imports for 14 countries from 169 countries. Contrary to conventional expectations in the literature, we find that economic integration among small and relatively low-income countries that have a small share of total trade with each other is welfare-improving for the members as a group, for the majority of the individual member countries, and for some third countries. Accounting for heterogeneity in third countries reveals that an RTA among low-income countries has a particularly robust trade-creation effect.

Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00036846.2016.1234700 (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:taf:applec:v:49:y:2017:i:22:p:2188-2202

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAEC20

DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2016.1234700

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economics is currently edited by Anita Phillips

More articles in Applied Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().