The stumbling-bloc argument asserts that regionalism hinders MFN tariff cutting. If this was of first-order importance over previous decades, we should detect this in the levels of the tariffs. Using tariff line data for 23 large trading nations we find that MFN and PTA tariffs are complements,...

This paper examines whether the Gulf Cooperation Council Countries (GCC) exerted any trade enhancing impact on its members by employing standard augmented gravity model as well as stochastic frontier gravity model. Panel data sets are constructed over the period of 1980 to 2008 for imports and...

This paper explores the growth implications of regional integration. From the theory, it identifies the ‘footprints’ that such growth should leave in the data. It then checks the data on the four poor EU nations for such footprints. Prima facie evidence for Ireland, Portugal and Spain...