Whether international economic integration arrangements result in a more liberal trade at the multilateral level cannot be proven with ease. Integration may start this process, but it may also reverse it. New mega-integration deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Regional Comprehensive...

A new cooperation Agreement has been signed between the European Union and the 77 ACP Countries in Cotonou (Benin) on June 23rd 2000. A point of this agreement is regarding a new trade cooperation between these different countries in districts (or regions) gathered and the European Union, based...

One of the main aims of the regionalism and economic integration is to encourage export performance, especially intra-regional trade. The Constant Market Shares (CMS) method is commonly to examine empirically the countries’ export performance. This paper is addressed to examine the regions’...

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,...

The Free Trade Area of the Americas FTAA will increase import competition for some forest product industries in Alabama but create export opportunities for others. Forest products loom large in the Alabama economy, both in terms of income and pollution. The present paper gauges the potential...

This paper analyzes the trade creation and trade diversion effects of the regional trade agreements (RTAs) in Asia and their effects on intra-regional trade flows using annual trade data for the period 1980-2009. The research will attempt to achieve the following objectives: (a) analyze the...

According to the conventional home-market effect, free trade tends to shrink the market share for a small economy in differentiated manufacturing goods, and in the extreme leads to a complete hollowing-out of the industry in a small economy. This paper considers the technology difference between...

This paper examines the trading pattern of Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi- Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) by employing an augmented gravity model. The econometric specification followed Egger (2000, 2002), Baltagi et al. (2003) and Serlenga and Shin (2007). Diagnostic...