Do South-South Trade Agreements Increase Trade? Commodity-Level Evidence from COMESA

Anna Maria Mayda and Chad Steinberg
Additional contact information
Chad Steinberg: International Monetary Fund

No 247, Development Working Papers from Centro Studi Luca d'Agliano, University of Milano

Abstract: South-South trade agreements are proliferating: Developing countries signed 70 new agreements between 1990 and 2003. Yet the impact of these agreements is largely unknown, as existing North- North and North-South micro-level studies are likely to yield misleading predictions for South-South trade agreements. This paper focuses on the static effects of South-South preferential trade agreements stemming from changes in trade patterns. Specifically, it estimates the impact of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) on Uganda’s imports between 1994 and 2003. Detailed import and tariff data at the 6-digit harmonized system level are used for more than 1,000 commodities. Based on a difference-in-difference estimation strategy, the paper finds that—in contrast to evidence from aggregate statistics—COMESA’s preferential tariff liberalization has not considerably increased Uganda’s trade with member countries, on average across sectors. The effect, however, is heterogeneous across sectors. Finally, the paper finds no evidence of trade diversion effects.

Keywords: South-South trade agreements; trade creation; trade diversion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F13 F14 F15 O24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 45
Date: 2008-06-30
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.dagliano.unimi.it/media/wp2008_247.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Do South-South trade agreements increase trade? Commodity-level evidence from COMESA (2009)
Working Paper: Do South-South Trade Agreements Increase Trade? Commodity-Level Evidence from COMESA (2006)
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:csl:devewp:247

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Development Working Papers from Centro Studi Luca d'Agliano, University of Milano Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chiara Elli ().