On the Heterogeneous Trade and Welfare Effects of GATT/WTO Membership

Gabriel Felbermayr, Mario Larch, Erdal Yalcin and Yoto Yotov

No 2020-12, School of Economics Working Paper Series from LeBow College of Business, Drexel University

Abstract: We build on the latest developments in the structural gravity literature to quantify the partial and general equilibrium effects of GATT/WTO membership on trade and welfare. Using an extensive database covering manufacturing trade for 186 countries over the period 1980-2016, we find that the average impact of GATT/WTO membership on trade among member counties is large, positive, and significant. We contribute to the literature by estimating country-specific estimates and find them to vary widely across the countries in our sample with poorer members benefiting more. Using these estimates, we simulate the general equilibrium effects of GATT/WTO on welfare, which are sizable and heterogeneous across members, and relatively small for non-member countries. We show that countries not experiencing positive trade effects from joining GATT/WTO can still gain in terms of welfare, due to beneficial terms-of-trade effects.

Keywords: GATT; WTO; Heterogeneous Policy Effects; Structural Gravity; Welfare (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F10 F13 F14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 40 pages
Date: 2020-09-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1i1deWeKjLZrXtJfJf ... Qo1/view?usp=sharing Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: On the heterogeneous trade and welfare effects of GATT/WTO membership (2024)
Working Paper: On the Heterogeneous Trade and Welfare Effects of GATT/WTO Membership (2022)
Working Paper: On the Heterogeneous Trade and Welfare Effects of GATT/WTO Membership (2020)
Working Paper: On the heterogeneous trade and welfare effects of GATT/WTO membership (2020)
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:ris:drxlwp:2020_012

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in School of Economics Working Paper Series from LeBow College of Business, Drexel University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Richard C. Barnett ().