We use the Michigan Model of World Production and Trade to assess the economic effects of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) that is currently being negotiated among the 34 countries in the region. The model covers 18 economic sectors in each of 22 countries/regions and is based on Version 5.4 of the GTAP database for 1997 together with specially constructed estimates of services barriers and other data on sectoral employment and numbers of firms. The distinguishing feature of the model is that it incorporates some aspects of trade with imperfect competition in the manufacturing and services sectors, including monopolistic competition, increasing returns, and product variety. The modeling focus is on the effects of the bilateral removal of tariffs on agriculture and manufactures and services barriers. Rules of origin and other restrictive measures and the non-trade aspects of the FTAA are not taken into account due to data constraints. The computational results indicate that the FTAA would increase the economic welfare of the FTAA member countries by $118.8 billion, with the largest increases accruing to the United States, $67.6 billion, and to South America, $31.0 billion. The FTAA is trade diverting for most of the rest-of-world, with a welfare reduction of $9.3 billion. In comparison, if the FTAA countries were to adopt unilateral free trade, total FTAA member welfare would increase by $476.8 billion and global welfare by $812.7 billion. If multilateral free trade were adopted by all countries/regions in the global trading system, the welfare effects would be considerably larger, $751.2 billion for the FTAA members and $2.7 trillion globally.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Research Seminar in International Economics, University of Michigan in its series Working Papers with number
528.
Find related papers by JEL classification: F13 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade Policy; International Trade Organizations F10 - International Economics - - Trade - - - General F15 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Economic Integration
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.:
Cited by: (explanations, 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.)