We study the performance of the four Western Hemisphere trading blocs during the period 1978-2001. For the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), trade integration outweighed trade diversion; for MERCOSUR, increased integration and trade diversion went hand in hand; for the Central American...

Trade theories covering Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) are as diverse as the literature in search of their empirical support. To account for the model uncertainty that surrounds the validity of the competing PTA theories, we introduce Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) to the PTA literature....

Is the recent proliferation of Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) in Asia a healthy development, or runs the risk of turning into an unmanageable "noodle bowl" in the future? The goal of this paper is to shed some light on this question. The results show that membership in the Asian RTAs...

This study investigates the role of India's economy in explaining the observed growth in South Asia, taking into consideration other sources of growth endogenous to the countries in the region. Since a review of key variables indicates that India's bilateral trade and financial linkages with...

The influential work of Ramey and Ramey (1995) highlighted an empirical relationship that has now come to be regarded as conventional wisdom-that output volatility and growth are negatively correlated. We reexamine this relationship in the context of globalization-a term typically used to...

The paper analyses the potential trade impact of the forthcoming East African Community (EAC) customs union. It examines the trade linkages among the member countries of the EAC and the extent to which the introduction of the EAC common external tariff will liberalize their trade regimes. To...

This paper examines the relationship between fixed exchange rate arrangements and trade using a gravity model of international trade together with bilateral trade data from 24 countries from the Caribbean and Latin America for the period 1960-2001. The analysis indicates that a credible fixed...