IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/86614.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Special economic zones and WTO compliance: evidence from the Dominican Republic

Author

Listed:
  • Defever, Fabrice
  • Reyes, Jose-Daniel
  • Riaño, Alejandro
  • Sánchez-Martín, Miguel Eduardo

Abstract

Special economic zones (SEZ), one of the most important instruments of industrial policy used in developing countries, often impose export share requirements (ESR). That is, firms located in SEZ are required to export more than a certain share of their output to enjoy a wide array of incentives - a practice prohibited by the World Trade Organization's Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures. In this paper we exploit the staggered removal of ESR across products and over time in the SEZ of the Dominican Republic - a reform driven by external commitments to comply with WTO disciplines on subsidies - to evaluate how ESR effect export performance at the product- and firmlevel. Using customs data on international trade transactions from the period 2006 to 2014, we find that making the Dominican SEZ regime WTO-compliant made SEZ more attractive locations for exporters to be based in. The reform, however, did not have a significant effect on the country's exports nor on the share of export value originating from SEZ

Suggested Citation

  • Defever, Fabrice & Reyes, Jose-Daniel & Riaño, Alejandro & Sánchez-Martín, Miguel Eduardo, 2017. "Special economic zones and WTO compliance: evidence from the Dominican Republic," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 86614, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:86614
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/86614/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Andrew K. Rose, 2004. "Do We Really Know That the WTO Increases Trade?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(1), pages 98-114, March.
    2. Jonathan Eaton & Samuel Kortum & Francis Kramarz, 2011. "An Anatomy of International Trade: Evidence From French Firms," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 79(5), pages 1453-1498, September.
    3. Trefler, Daniel, 1993. "Trade Liberalization and the Theory of Endogenous Protection: An Econometric Study of U.S. Import Policy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(1), pages 138-160, February.
    4. Hamada, Koichi, 1974. "An economic analysis of the duty-free zone," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 4(3), pages 225-241, August.
    5. repec:ilo:ilowps:398959 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Eicher, Theo S. & Henn, Christian, 2011. "In search of WTO trade effects: Preferential trade agreements promote trade strongly, but unevenly," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(2), pages 137-153, March.
    7. Subramanian, Arvind & Wei, Shang-Jin, 2007. "The WTO promotes trade, strongly but unevenly," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 151-175, May.
    8. Devereux, John & Chen, Lein Lein, 1995. "Export Zones and Welfare: Another Look," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 47(4), pages 704-713, October.
    9. James Harrigan & Geoffrey Barrows, 2009. "Testing the Theory of Trade Policy: Evidence from the Abrupt End of the Multifiber Arrangement," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 91(2), pages 282-294, May.
    10. Matthieu Crozet & Keith Head & Thierry Mayer, 2012. "Quality Sorting and Trade: Firm-level Evidence for French Wine," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 79(2), pages 609-644.
    11. Kyle Bagwell & Robert W. Staiger, 2006. "Will International Rules on Subsidies Disrupt the World Trading System?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(3), pages 877-895, June.
    12. Wang, Jin, 2013. "The economic impact of Special Economic Zones: Evidence from Chinese municipalities," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 133-147.
    13. Singa Boyenge, Jean-Pierre., 2007. "ILO database on export processing zones (Revised)," ILO Working Papers 993989593402676, International Labour Organization.
    14. Creskoff, Stephen & Walkenhorst, Peter, 2009. "Implications of WTO disciplines for special economic zones in developing countries," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4892, The World Bank.
    15. Marc J. Melitz, 2003. "The Impact of Trade on Intra-Industry Reallocations and Aggregate Industry Productivity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(6), pages 1695-1725, November.
    16. repec:idb:idbbks:259 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. repec:idb:brikps:16458 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Dani Rodrik, 1987. "The Economics of Export-Performance Requirements," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 102(3), pages 633-650.
    19. Kaplinsky, Raphael, 1993. "Export Processing Zones in the Dominican Republic: Transforming manufactures into commodities," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 21(11), pages 1851-1865, November.
    20. Schrank, Andrew, 2008. "Export Processing Zones in the Dominican Republic: Schools or Stopgaps?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 36(8), pages 1381-1397, August.
    21. Fernandes, Ana M. & Freund, Caroline & Pierola, Martha Denisse, 2016. "Exporter behavior, country size and stage of development: Evidence from the exporter dynamics database," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 121-137.
    22. Willmore, Larry, 1995. "Export processing zones in the Dominican Republic: A comment on Kaplinsky," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 529-535, March.
    23. Ronald B. Davies & Arman Mazhikeyev, 2015. "The Impact of Special Economic Zones on Exporting Behavior," Working Papers 201528, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    24. Carl Davidson & Steven J. Matusz & Mordechai E. Kreinin, 1985. "Analysis of Performance Standards for Direct Foreign Investments," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 18(4), pages 876-890, November.
    25. David De Remer, 2013. "The Evolution of International Subsidy Rules," Working Papers ECARES ECARES 2013-45, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    26. Munch, Jakob R. & Nguyen, Daniel X., 2014. "Decomposing firm-level sales variation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 317-334.
    27. Hartigan, James C, 1996. "Perverse Consequences of the GATT: Export Subsidies and Switching Costs," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 63(249), pages 153-161, February.
    28. Thomas Farole & Gokhan Akinci, 2011. "Special Economic Zones : Progress, Emerging Challenges, and Future Directions," World Bank Publications, The World Bank, number 2341, September.
    29. Christian Volpe Martincus, 2010. "Odyssey in International Markets: An Assessment of the Effectiveness of Export Promotion in Latin America and the Caribbean," IDB Publications (Books), Inter-American Development Bank, number 16458, February.
    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. Ronald B. Davies & Rodolphe Desbordes, 2018. "Export Processing Zones and the Composition of Greenfield FDI," Working Papers 201807, School of Economics, University College Dublin.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    special economic zones; export share requirements; export subsidies; agreement on subsidies and countervailing measures; Dominican Republic;

    JEL classification:

    • F12 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Models of Trade with Imperfect Competition and Scale Economies; Fragmentation
    • F13 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade Policy; International Trade Organizations
    • O47 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Empirical Studies of Economic Growth; Aggregate Productivity; Cross-Country Output Convergence

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:ehl:lserod:86614. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (LSERO Manager). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    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 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.

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.