Consumer benefits from EU trade liberalisation: How much did we save since the Uruguay Round?

Lucian Cernat, Daphne Gerard, Oscar Guinea and Lorenzo Isella
Additional contact information
Daphne Gerard: European Commission
Oscar Guinea: Scottish Government
Lorenzo Isella: European Commission

No 2018-1, DG TRADE Chief Economist Notes from Directorate General for Trade, European Commission

Abstract: Throughout human history, trade remained a key factor in explaining the economic rise and fall of societies and nations. Despite the perennial nature of international trade in our societies and the ample evidence in favour of its importance, the benefits from trade for individual consumers are still subject to misunderstandings. Using a novel technique matching very detailed household consumption and import data, we quantify one narrow aspect of the multitude of consumer gains from trade - the tariff savings for EU households and consumers over the last two decades, as a result of multilateral and bilateral trade agreements. Overall, the total annual tariff savings for all EU households (if the pre-Uruguay Round tariffs continued to apply on today's imports) amount to around 60 billion euro.

Keywords: Consumer benefits; trade liberalisation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24 pages
Date: 2018-02-09
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ris:dgtcen:2018_001

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