Do free trade agreements actually increase members' international trade? [An article from: Journal of International Economics]

This digital document is a journal article from Journal of International Economics, published by Elsevier in 2007. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
For over 40 years, the gravity equation has been a workhorse for cross-country empirical analyses of international trade flows and - in particular - the effects of free trade agreements (FTAs) on trade flows. However, the gravity equation is subject to the same econometric critique as earlier cross-industry studies of U.S. tariff and nontariff barriers and U.S. multilateral imports: trade policy is not an exogenous variable. We address econometrically the endogeneity of FTAs. Although instrumental-variable and control-function approaches do not adjust for endogeneity well, a panel approach does. Accounting econometrically for the FTA variable's endogeneity yields striking empirical results: the effect of FTAs on trade flows is quintupled. We find that, on average, an FTA approximately doubles two members' bilateral trade after 10 years.