Trade and International Transport Services: An Analytical Framework

International Transport Services (ITS) play an important role in influencing international trade flows. This paper develops an analytical framework in which ITS costs are endogenously determined. It shows that ITS sector liberalization foster international trade very much the same way tariff liberalization does. From a political economy viewpoint, a unilateral liberalization of the sector may not always be politically feasible, and a multilateral agreement can help prop up support for reform. It is further argued that deregulation and competition policy reform are more likely to be feasible if undertaken jointly. (JEL F12, F23, L91)Trade Facilitation, Transport Services, International Negotiations

Preferential Trade Agreements: Endogenous Response of the Third Country

In most of the current debate on regionalism versus multilateralism, the countries excluded from a Preferential Trading Agreement (PTA) are assumed to be passive players with exogenously fixed trade policies. In reality however, non-members do react to the creation of a trading bloc and relaxing this assumption can provide useful insights. Using a political economy model, this paper explore the case where those excluded countries can adjust their commercial policies in order to minimize the negative effects of the PTA. It is shown that the creation of a PTA can lead the excluded countries to increase their trade barriers with respect to the PTA members.Political Economy

Competitive Liberalization or Competitive Diversion? The Relationship between Preferential Trade Agreements and the Multilateral Trading System

This article discusses whether the current proliferation of preferential trade agreements-the so-called "competitive liberalization"-encourages evolution toward multilateral free trade. It argues that countries pursuing preferential trade initiatives are in pursuit of the economic rents resulting from the trade diversion associated with trade preference (or discrimination). By lowering the margin of preference, multilateral trade liberalization reduces those rents and is likely to be resisted by members of trade-diverting preferential blocs. Future preferential agreements should be designed to be less trade diverting in order to be more compatible with the objective of global free trade.competitive liberalization Regionalism Multilateralism

Regional groupings among microstates

Forming a regional grouping with neighboring nations may be one way for microstates to overcome a major problem: Because of their weak bargaining power and high fixed costs of negotiation, microstates are at a severe disadvantage in dealing with the rest of the world. They don't have the human and physical resources to unilaterally conduct the various bilateral and multilateral negotiations a developing nation typically conducts. The authors present a model in which the decision to form, expand, or join a regional club is based on reduced negotiating costs and increased bargaining power, rather than on the traditional costs and benefits of trade integration (which might be miniscule for a microstate and might even generate welfare losses). Under various conditions for entry, the model is used to determine the equilibrium group size, which is shown to be positively correlated with the number of issues to be tackled, the degree of similarity among countries, and the per-issue costs of international negotiation. They use the case of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) to show the model's relevance in the real world. The countries that belong to CARICOM pooled their negotiating resources and formulated common policy stances. Despite its relatively limited impact on trade and investments, CARICOM served as a political instrument in joint negotiations on trade and investment with larger countries and regional trade blocs. By establishing a union, the CARICOM countries succeeded in making their voices heard on a variety of issues in a way none of them could have done alone.Economic Theory&Research,Health Systems Development&Reform,Environmental Economics&Policies,Decentralization,Scientific Research&Science Parks,Economic Theory&Research,Trade and Regional Integration,Environmental Economics&Policies,Scientific Research&Science Parks,Science Education

REGIONALISM, TRADE AND GROWTH: THE CASE OF THE EU-SOUTH AFRICA FREE TRADE ARRANGEMENT

In a sequential Computable General Equilibrium analysis, we investigate the likely effects of the EU-South Africa Free Trade agreement (FTA), with a special emphasis on South Africa’s growth prospects. We find that the FTA increases South African output and welfare. We note, however, that the gains are very modest when viewed in the context of the time period over which full adjustment to the treaty provisions is expected to occur. Only 2 percent of the economic growth expected over the next 18 years in South Africa can be linked to additional trade associated with the FTA. The long phase-in period and the partial benefits of regionalism limit the importance of trade as an engine of growth.Free Trade Area, South Africa, European Union

On the size and number of regional integration arrangements - a political economy model

Will the current wave of regional integration arrangements lead to the world being divided into competing inward-looking trading blocs? Or will it lead to a more open multilateral trading system? Using a multi-country political economy model, and after having shown that global free trade is optimal, the author investigates the possibility of achieving it through regionalism. An outsider country considering entering a trading bloc must weight the tradeoff between the costs of opening its own market to more foreign competition and the gains from getting better access to the bloc's preferential market. The gain of access is always larger, so an outsider would always want to apply for membership in the existing bloc. If the bloc policy is open membership, its expansion would result in global free trade. But if member countries can accept or reject new members, expansion of the bloc is unlikely to yield global free trade. When deciding whether to accept or reject new member, an insider compares the gains from getting preferential access to the new member's market with the losses from having to share its original preferential market with the new member. When the bloc is small, the gains are large enough to offset the losses, so insiders are willing to accept new members. As the bloc expands, the insiders'incentive for expanding decreases, eventually to zero. If only one regional integration arrangement were allowed to form, insiders would stop accepting new members when half the world belonged to the bloc. The remaining outsiders would probably form a bloc of their own, which would lead members of the original bloc to increase its size in anticipation of the creation of the second bloc. The threat of regionalism by outsiders would foster larger regional integration arrangements. In this model, the typical sub-game perfect equilibrium would be two blocs, one of them containing roughly two-thirds of the world, the other containing roughly one-third. Even if blocs form and merge simultaneously, yielding progressively larger symmetrical blocs, they would fail to converge in a single bloc unless the external tariff were low enough. In other words, global free trade could be achieved through bloc expansion if trading blocs lowered their external tariffs when abolishing their internal tariffs.Trade Policy,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Rules of Origin,Labor Policies,Trade Policy,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Trade and Regional Integration,TF054105-DONOR FUNDED OPERATION ADMINISTRATION FEE INCOME AND EXPENSE ACCOUNT

Assessing the economic impacts of an economic partnership agreement on Nigeria

This study discusses potential economic implications for Nigeria of an Economic Partnership Agreement with the European Union. It uses the World Bank’s Tariff Reform Impact Simulation Tool to assess the effects of preferential tariff liberalization with respect to the European Union. The results suggest that the impact of an Economic Partnership Agreement on total imports into Nigeria will be slight. This is in part because the Agreement will likely allow the most protected sectors to be excluded from liberalization, and also because where substantial tariffs are involved much of the increase in imports from the European Union will occur at the expense of other suppliers of imports. It is this trade diversion, arising from the discriminatory nature of the EPA, which generates a negative welfare impact of the tariff reforms. One way for Nigeria to limit these losses is to pursue non-preferential trade liberalization before implementing an EPA. The paper looks at the large number of import bans in Nigeria and argues that the positive impact on welfare of removing these import bans is likely to be substantial. Their removal would undermine a major reason for cross border smuggling and pave the way for a return to normal regional trade flows. The paper shows how an Economic Partnership Agreement presents an opportunity for accelerating the reforms that are needed to support a strategy to increase regional and global trade integration. Such an agreement is more likely to have positive and significant impacts when integrated into a comprehensive strategy toward competitiveness and alleviation of the supply constraints that have stifled the impact of previous trade agreements. Key issues that should be addressed include liberalization and regulatory strengthening of services sectors to ensure that all firms in Nigeria have access to efficiently produced backbone services and initiatives to address the country’s poor trade logistics performance.Free Trade,Trade Policy,Currencies and Exchange Rates,Debt Markets,Trade Law

On the size and number of preferential trading arrangements

This paper uses a multi-country political economy model to investigate the possibility of achieving global free trade through the expansion of Preferential Trading Arrangements (PTAs). It is shown that bloc expansion would result in global free trade if blocs have an open membership. However, that would not be the case if membership were selective: at some point, the members of the bloc would stop accepting new members and this would lead to the creation of a second bloc. The likelihood of such a second bloc would make the members of the first bloc choose a larger bloc size than they would have chosen if only one bloc was allowed to form.Ptas, Regionalism, Multilateralism, Political Economy,

On the Size and Number of Regional Integration Arrangements: A Political Economy Model

This paper addresses these issues using a multi-country political economy model. Having established at the outset that global free trade is optimal and that it is initially feasible as a one-shot game, the paper investigates the possibility of achieving it through the regionalism approach. The goal is to determine the likely equilibrium size and number of RIAs