There is a strong presumption among economists that domestic reforms are promoted by regionalism. Yet strong empirical evidence for this proposition is lacking. This paper examines both the theoretical arguments and empirical evidence on this issue, drawing on the relevant economic, political,...

The study suggests an approach to reduce India’s sensitive list under SAFTA. The concept of Revealed Comparative Advantage has been used to pair the RCAs for products on India’s sensitive list with the corresponding RCAs of the SAARC countries. Four categories of items are generated based on...

The aim of this paper is (i) to assess the impact of regional agreements on members’ trade in Sub-Saharan Africa (intra-regional trade as well as trade with the rest of the world), controlling for the other traditional determinants, including geography and transport costs and (ii) to compare...

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 paper provides a review of agriculture-related provisions in free trade agreements signed by Latin American countries and in force by December 2004. It is shown that the exceptional treatment received by the agricultural sector in the WTO is also found in free trade agreements. Many...

We summarise salient developments in the interaction of the multilateral trading system and multilateral trading agreements (MTAs) on the one hand and regional trading agreements (RTAs) on the other. We then consider the economic effects of RTAs, comparing customs unions with free trade...