IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ris/drxlwp/2019_004.html

On the Effects of GATT/WTO Membership on Trade: They are Positive and Large After All

Author

Listed:
  • Mario Larch

    (Department of Law and Economics, University of Bayreuth & CEPII & ifo; CESifo & GEP.)

  • José-Antonio Monteiro

    (World Trade Organization)

  • Roberta Piermartini

    (World Trade Organization)

  • Yoto Yotov

    (School of Economics, Drexel University & CESifo & ifo Institute & ERB-BAS)

Abstract

We capitalize on the latest developments in the empirical structural gravity literature to revisit the question of whether and how much does GATT/WTO membership affect international trade. We are the first to capture the non discriminatory nature of GATT/WTO commitments by measuring the effects of GATT/WTO membership on international trade relative to domestic sales. These unilateral effects of GATT/WTO membership are found to be large, positive, and statistically significant. We also obtain bilateral GATT/WTO estimates, which are larger than those reported in the literature. In particular, our results imply that, on average, joining GATT and/or WTO has increased trade between members by 171% and trade between member and non-member countries by about 88%. We also find that although both GATT/WTO has been effective in promoting trade between members, the WTO has been more effective in promoting trade with non-members than GATT. A battery of sensitivity experiments confirms the effectiveness of our methods and robustness of our main findings.

Suggested Citation

  • Mario Larch & José-Antonio Monteiro & Roberta Piermartini & Yoto Yotov, 2019. "On the Effects of GATT/WTO Membership on Trade: They are Positive and Large After All," School of Economics Working Paper Series 2019-4, LeBow College of Business, Drexel University.
    • Handle: RePEc:ris:drxlwp:2019_004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Hk6VdggC6Oi0EeYXlEc5Y5yiG2WKEeZK
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • F13 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade Policy; International Trade Organizations
    • F14 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Empirical Studies of Trade
    • F16 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade and Labor Market Interactions

    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:ris:drxlwp:2019_004. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Richard C. Barnett (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dedreus.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.