IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/pugtwp/332217.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

On the Determinants of Trade in Services: Evidence from the MENA Region

Author

Listed:
  • Karam, Fida
  • Zaki, Chahir

Abstract

This paper examines the determinants of aggregate flows of service trade in MENA countries using an adapted version of the gravity model and a panel dataset covering the 2000- 2009 period for 21 countries and 10 sectors. A new determinant of trade performance is introduced: the number of commitments undertaken by sector in the WTO as well as the availability of those commitments by mode. The results show that being a WTO member boosts trade in services. In addition, the number of commitments and binding these commitments increase exports, imports and trade in services. This positive and significant effect remains robust even after controlling for several econometric issues, namely the selection bias related to the WTO membership and the endogeneity of commitments.

Suggested Citation

  • Karam, Fida & Zaki, Chahir, 2012. "On the Determinants of Trade in Services: Evidence from the MENA Region," Conference papers 332217, Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:pugtwp:332217
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/332217/files/5695.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. James E. Anderson & Eric van Wincoop, 2003. "Gravity with Gravitas: A Solution to the Border Puzzle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 170-192, March.
    2. Keith Walsh, 2006. "Trade in Services: Does Gravity Hold? A Gravity Model Approach to Estimating Barriers to Services Trade," The Institute for International Integration Studies Discussion Paper Series iiisdp183, IIIS.
    3. Robert C. Feenstra, 2002. "Border Effects and the Gravity Equation: Consistent Methods for Estimation," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 49(5), pages 491-506, November.
    4. Fukunari Kimura & Hyun-Hoon Lee, 2006. "The Gravity Equation in International Trade in Services," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 142(1), pages 92-121, April.
    5. J. M. C. Santos Silva & Silvana Tenreyro, 2006. "The Log of Gravity," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 88(4), pages 641-658, November.
    6. Robert C. Feenstra & James R. Markusen & Andrew K. Rose, 2001. "Using the gravity equation to differentiate among alternative theories of trade," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 34(2), pages 430-447, May.
    7. Simon J. Evenett & Wolfgang Keller, 2002. "On Theories Explaining the Success of the Gravity Equation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(2), pages 281-316, April.
    8. Heckman, James, 2013. "Sample selection bias as a specification error," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 31(3), pages 129-137.
    9. McCallum, John, 1995. "National Borders Matter: Canada-U.S. Regional Trade Patterns," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(3), pages 615-623, June.
    10. Sudip Ranjan Basu & Victor Ognivtsev & Miho Shirotori, 2009. "Building Trade-Relating Institutions And Wto Accession," UNCTAD Blue Series Papers 41, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
    11. Anderson, James E, 1979. "A Theoretical Foundation for the Gravity Equation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 69(1), pages 106-116, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jose Luis Castillo Mezarina, 2021. "The impact of free trade agreements in national markets: Evidence from the telecommunications sector in Latin America," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(4), pages 860-903, September.
    2. Ahmad A. Al-Majali & Radi M. Adayleh, 2018. "International Competitiveness in Services in Some Middle East and North Africa Countries Using Gravity Model," International Review of Management and Marketing, Econjournals, vol. 8(2), pages 53-62.
    3. Boughanmi Houcine & Al-Riyami Said, 2019. "Service Trade Liberalization in Oman: International Commitments and Trade Performance," Review of Middle East Economics and Finance, De Gruyter, vol. 15(1), pages 1-12, April.
    4. Gnangnon, Sèna Kimm, 2020. "Aid for Trade and Services Export Diversification in Recipient-Countries," EconStor Preprints 210467, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    5. Sèna K. Gnangnon, 2021. "Aid for Trade and services export diversification in recipient countries," Australian Economic Papers, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(2), pages 189-225, June.
    6. Shadrack Muthami Mwatu, 2023. "Determinants of gendered participation in domestic trade: evidence from Kenya," Journal of Global Entrepreneurship Research, Springer;UNESCO Chair in Entrepreneurship, vol. 13(1), pages 1-15, December.
    7. Amélie GUILLIN & Isabelle RABAUD & Chahir ZAKI, 2022. "Does the Depth of Trade Agreements Matter for Trade in Services? Evidence from the MENA Region," LEO Working Papers / DR LEO 2984, Orleans Economics Laboratory / Laboratoire d'Economie d'Orleans (LEO), University of Orleans.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rana Hendy & Chahir Zaki, 2014. "Trade Facilitation and Firms Exports: The Case of Egypt," Working Papers 843, Economic Research Forum, revised Oct 2014.
    2. Hendy, Rana & Zaki, Chahir, 2021. "Trade facilitation and firms exports: Evidence from customs data," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 197-209.
    3. Dinçer, Gönül, 2014. "Turkey’s Rising Imports from BRICS: A Gravity Model Approach," MPRA Paper 61979, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Karam, Fida & Zaki, Chahir, 2019. "Why Don’t MENA Countries Trade More? The Curse of Deficient Institutions," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 56-77.
    5. Osabuohien, Evans & Efobi, Uchenna, 2014. "Manufacturing Export, ICT Infrastructure and Institutions in ECOWAS Countries," Conference papers 332524, Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project.
    6. Hoda El-Enbaby & Rana Hendy & Chahir Zaki, 2014. "Do Product Standards Matter for Margins of Trade In Egypt? Evidence from Firm-Level Data," Working Papers 840, Economic Research Forum, revised Jun 2014.
    7. Cardamone, Paola, 2007. "A Survey of the Assessments of the Effectiveness of Preferential Trade Agreements using Gravity Models," Economia Internazionale / International Economics, Camera di Commercio Industria Artigianato Agricoltura di Genova, vol. 60(4), pages 421-473.
    8. Kareem, Fatima Olanike & Martinez-Zarzoso, Inmaculada & Brümmer, Bernhard, 2016. "Fitting the Gravity Model when Zero Trade Flows are Frequent: a Comparison of Estimation Techniques using Africa's Trade Data," GlobalFood Discussion Papers 230588, Georg-August-Universitaet Goettingen, GlobalFood, Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development.
    9. Jacqueline Karlsson & Helena Melin & Kevin Cullinane, 2018. "The impact of potential Brexit scenarios on German car exports to the UK: an application of the gravity model," Journal of Shipping and Trade, Springer, vol. 3(1), pages 1-22, December.
    10. Daniel Lederman & Çaglar Özden, 2007. "Geopolitical Interests And Preferential Access To U.S. Markets," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(2), pages 235-258, July.
    11. Felix Groba, 2014. "Determinants of trade with solar energy technology components: evidence on the porter hypothesis?," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(5), pages 503-526, February.
    12. Anderson, James E. & Borchert, Ingo & Mattoo, Aaditya & Yotov, Yoto V., 2018. "Dark costs, missing data: Shedding some light on services trade," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 193-214.
    13. Simone Juhasz Silva & Douglas Nelson, 2012. "Does Aid Cause Trade? Evidence from an Asymmetric Gravity Model," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(5), pages 545-577, May.
    14. Zongo, Amara, 2020. "The Impact of Services Trade Restrictiveness on Food Trade," MPRA Paper 101658, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Olper, Alessandro & Raimondi, Valentina, 2008. "Agricultural market integration in the OECD: A gravity-border effect approach," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 165-175, April.
    16. Zhang, Daowei & Li, Yanshu, 2009. "Forest endowment, logging restrictions, and China's wood products trade," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 46-53, March.
    17. Bo Xiong & Sixia Chen, 2014. "Estimating gravity equation models in the presence of sample selection and heteroscedasticity," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(24), pages 2993-3003, August.
    18. Andrea Saayman & Paolo Figini & Silvio Cassella, 2016. "The influence of formal trade agreements and informal economic cooperation on international tourism flows," Tourism Economics, , vol. 22(6), pages 1274-1300, December.
    19. Lars Håkanson & Douglas Dow, 2012. "Markets and Networks in International Trade: On the Role of Distances in Globalization," Management International Review, Springer, vol. 52(6), pages 761-789, December.
    20. Elhanan Helpman & Marc Melitz & Yona Rubinstein, 2008. "Estimating Trade Flows: Trading Partners and Trading Volumes," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(2), pages 441-487.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:pugtwp:332217. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/gtpurus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.