Committing to Grow: The Full Impact of WTO Accessions

André Brotto, Adam Jakubik, Roberta Piermartini and Fulvio Silvy

No 2024/207, IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: This paper studies the impact of the process of accession to the WTO on growth rates in a sample of 150 economies. Unlike GATT-era accessions, WTO accessions involve reforms that extend beyond conventional trade liberalization measures. Using information on the pace of negotiations and requests in the working party's meetings, we construct an index that tracks the progress of reforms in the pre-accession period. We estimate that economies that implemented reforms and made deeper commitments during their WTO accession negotiations grew on average 1.5 percentage points faster than they otherwise would have. These results are robust to instrumental variable estimation and falsification tests.

Keywords: WTO accession; structural reforms; trade and growth; commitment index; GATT-era accession; accession mode; accession effect; accession period; General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade; Estimation techniques; Tariffs; Trade barriers; Trade policy; Global (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 46
Date: 2024-09-27
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Working Paper: Committing to grow: The full impact of WTO accessions (2024)
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