In 2007 a free trade area (BFTA) will be created in the Balkans. In this paper we study BFTA-induced trade growth in the SEE. Given that welfare impacts associated with trade growth depend on the growth channels, more goods and varieties exported or at higher price or more volume of exported goods and varieties, we study the structure of integration-induced export growth in the Balkans. Given that no firm-level trade data is available for the Balkans, we adopt the heterogeneous firm framework, which allows to decompose aggregate trade growth into intensive margin of trade and extensive margin of trade using only aggregate trade data. Our empirical findings predict that the BFTA would primarily increase the export volume through a growing number of shipments (the extensive margin of trade) suggesting that the actual welfare gains from the trade growth in the Balkans might in fact be larger than predicted in previous trade studies. We also found that reducing variable trade costs leads to higher export growth rates compared to reducing fixed trade costs by the same percentage. Copyright 2007 The Author Journal compilation Blackwell Publishing Ltd. .
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Article provided by Blackwell Publishing in its journal World Economy.
Volume (Year): 30 (2007) Issue (Month): 7 (07) Pages: 1139-1169 Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
James E. Anderson & Eric van Wincoop, 2004.
"Trade Costs,"
NBER Working Papers
10480, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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James E. Anderson & Eric van Wincoop, 2004.
"Trade Costs,"
Journal of Economic Literature,
American Economic Association, vol. 42(3), pages 691-751, September.
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