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N° 2005-02 |
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| January 2005 |
| Market Access in Global and Regional Trade |
Thierry Mayer
Soledad Zignago |
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| This paper develops a method
of assessment of market access difficulties with an application to manufactured
trade patterns between developing and developed countries. The method also offers
a renewal of the assessment of the impact of regional trading arrangements. We
use a micro-founded gravity-type model of trade patterns to estimate the impact
of national borders on revealed access to Northern markets by Southern producers.
This is made possible by the construction
and use of a new database. Ceteris paribus, in the nineties, a rich country imports on average 281 times
more from itself than from a developing country, only 61 times more when importing
from another rich country. Results reveal that those difficulties faced by developing
countries’ exporters in accessing developed countries’ consumers are
furthermore higher than the reciprocal. Currently, the tariff equivalents of those
border effects differ by around 31 percentage points. Those difficulties in Northern
market access have however experienced a noticeable fall since the mid seventies.
While tariffs still have in general an influence on trade patterns, our estimates
suggest that they are not an important component of market access difficulties
faced by Southern exporters on Northern markets. The EU, CUSA/NAFTA, ASEAN/AFTA
and MERCOSUR agreements all tend to reduce the estimated degree of market fragmentation
within these zones, with an expected ranking between the respective impact of
these agreements. |
Abstract |
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| Market Access; North-South Trade; Regional Integration; Border Effects; Gravity |
Keywords |
| F12; F15 |
JEL classification |
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