Does regionalism affect trade liberalization towards non-members?

Antoni Estevadeordal, Caroline Freund () and Emanuel Ornelas

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: We examine the effect of regionalism on unilateral trade liberalization using industry-level data on applied MFN tariffs and bilateral preferences for ten Latin American countries from 1990 to 2001. We find that preferential tariff reduction in a given sector leads to a reduction in the external (MFN) tariff in that sector. External liberalization is greater if preferences are granted to important suppliers. However, these “complementarity effects” of preferential liberalization on external liberalization do not arise in customs unions. Overall, our results suggest that concerns about a negative effect of preferential liberalization on external trade liberalization are unfounded.

Keywords: regionalism; external tariffs; trade liberalization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F13 F15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 62 pages
Date: 2008-05
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (131)

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/19584/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Does Regionalism Affect Trade Liberalization Toward Nonmembers? (2008)
Working Paper: Does Regionalism Affect Trade Liberalization Towards Non-Members? (2008)
Working Paper: Does regionalism affect trade liberalization toward non-members ? (2008)
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:ehl:lserod:19584

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().