Regional trade liberalisation

Justine Miller, Glenn Rayp and Samuel Standaert

Chapter 2 in Handbook of Regional Cooperation and Integration, 2024, pp 38-62 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Over the past seven decades, trade barriers have been dramatically reduced. To that end, most countries have simultaneously pursued both multilateral and preferential trade liberalisation. This is surprising as the latter is less effective and provides fewer benefits to the member countries. In this chapter, we tackle this puzzle and investigate what makes these trade agreements a popular option for countries worldwide from an economic, political, and social perspective. We review the normative case for preferential trade liberalisation before evaluating the economic and non-economic arguments favouring trade agreements. We contextualise our arguments by creating and analysing a dataset of trade agreements. We show how the broadly differing nature of those trade agreements influences trade gains and how countries and regions profit from this situation.

Keywords: Economics and Finance; Geography; Politics and Public Policy Urban and Regional Studies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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