South-South Regional Trade Agreements and Growth. A Panel Data Approach to the Evaluation of Three Latin American Trade Agreements

This study represents the evaluation of the effects of three Latin American trade agreements on growth for the countries involved. The use of a longitudinal data set allows for a new approach to the topic: under specific assumptions, the experience of a group of countries unaffected by the policy intervention will represent what the countries affcted would have experienced, had they not negotiated the agreement. This provides the basic piece of information needed for the evaluation of any policy change.;The results are in general supportive of the widespread distrust in the agreements among small and developing states, expressed by most of the existing literature.