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Preferential vs. multilateral trade liberalization: evidence and open questions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 May 2006

NUNO LIMÃO
NUNO LIMÃO
Affiliation:
University of Maryland and CEPR
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Abstract

All but one WTO member currently trade under one or more preferential trade agreements (PTAs). Despite the concern since the early 1990s that these agreements may be a stumbling block to multilateral trade liberalization (MTL) their numbers have risen at an increasing rate in the last 15 years. As preferential liberalization appears to become the rule rather than the exception, it is essential to ask whether there is evidence that it affects MTL. To do so we analyze recent empirical research that finds the US's and EU's PTAs were a stumbling block to their MTL in the Uruguay Round. We also propose new empirical work to answer more definitively whether PTAs are a stumbling block to worldwide MTL.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Trade Review , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , July 2006 , pp. 155 - 176
Copyright
© Nuno Limão

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Footnotes

I thank, without implicating, Sanoussi Bilal, Chad Bown, Bernard Hoekman, Marcelo Olarreaga, Alan Winters and participants at the International Trade Roundtable in Brussels (June 2005) for comments. I thank Piyush Chandra for research assistance. Some of this research was undertaken while visiting the Trade Research Group at the World Bank, I gratefully acknowledge their support. The views in this paper are the sole responsibility of the author.