 Regional integration and production location: what theories (do not) tell usNo 18862, Working Papers from TRADEAG - Agricultural Trade Agreements Abstract: There is broad empirical evidence showing that regional integration considerably influences the choice of firms over the location of production; nevertheless, the theoretical literature on this issue is rather limited. Traditional preferential trade theory does not include the driving force of these changes, that is, economies of scale. The paper surveys recent contributions from the new economic geography and the multinational enterprise literature addressing the issue of the effects of preferential trade, with the aim of examining the main features of the models, and assessing their predictions and policy implications critically. The paper shows, among other things, that the findings are often contradictory, depending upon the underlying hypotheses of the models used. Overall, there is a need of further research on the welfare implications of preferential trade agreements when location effects are considered; policy implications may be relevant, especially for small countries joining preferential trade areas with the expectation of benefiting from the location of economic activity in their territory. Keywords: Community/Rural/Urban; Development (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:ags:tragwp:18862 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Working Papers from TRADEAG - Agricultural Trade Agreements |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to econpapers@oru.se.
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.