THE Effects of Multilateral Trade Liberalization on the Extensive and the Intensive Margins of Trade

Styliani Christodoulopoulou

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This paper examines empirically the effects of the WTO and RTA membership on the extensive and the intensive margins of trade. Using disaggregated data for a sample of 177 countries, the main findings of this paper are that WTO membership tends to increase the number of products traded between members (extensive margin), and tends to increase the average sales per product line (intensive margin). I further detect substantial heterogeneity when I examine these effects for various subsamples of the data (e.g. by the degree of product differentiation or the level of development of a country). This demonstrates that many of the aggregate effects estimated in the existing literature (e.g. Rose 2004) hide a substantial amount of variation in the WTO's effect on trade. Finally, accounting for multilateral resistance as in Anderson and van Wincoop (2003), I find that the WTO effect becomes insignificant, while the RTA membership boosts trade between members and between members and outsiders at least in the aggregate level.

Keywords: WTO; Regional Trade Agreements; Extensive margin; Intensive Margin; Poisson Regression (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F13 F15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-07-22
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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