IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/9629.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Machine Learning in International Trade Research : Evaluating the Impact of Trade Agreements

Author

Listed:
  • Breinlich,Holger
  • Corradi,Valentina
  • Rocha,Nadia
  • Ruta,Michele
  • Santos Silva,J.M.C.
  • Zylkin,Tom

Abstract

Modern trade agreements contain a large number of provisions besides tariff reductions, inareas as diverse as services trade, competition policy, trade-related investment measures, or public procurement.Existing research has struggled with overfitting and severe multicollinearity problems when trying to estimate theeffects of these provisions on trade flows. This paper builds on recent developments in the machine learning andvariable selection literature to propose novel data-driven methods for selecting the most important provisions andquantifying their impact on trade flows. The proposed methods have the advantage of not requiring ad hocassumptions on how to aggregate individual provisions and offer improved selection accuracy over the standard lasso.The analysis finds that provisions related to technical barriers to trade, antidumping, trade facilitation,subsidies, and competition policy are associated with enhancing the trade-increasing effect of trade agreements.

Suggested Citation

  • Breinlich,Holger & Corradi,Valentina & Rocha,Nadia & Ruta,Michele & Santos Silva,J.M.C. & Zylkin,Tom, 2021. "Machine Learning in International Trade Research : Evaluating the Impact of Trade Agreements," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9629, The World Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:9629
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/730781618338899906/pdf/Machine-Learning-in-International-Trade-Research-Evaluating-the-Impact-of-Trade-Agreements.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alexandre Belloni & Victor Chernozhukov & Christian Hansen & Damian Kozbur, 2016. "Inference in High-Dimensional Panel Models With an Application to Gun Control," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(4), pages 590-605, October.
    2. Aaditya Mattoo & Alen Mulabdic & Michele Ruta, 2022. "Trade creation and trade diversion in deep agreements," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 55(3), pages 1598-1637, August.
    3. Mulabdic,Alen & Osnago,Alberto & Ruta,Michele, 2017. "Deep integration and UK-EU trade relations," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7947, The World Bank.
    4. Aaditya Mattoo & Nadia Rocha & Michele Ruta, 2020. "Handbook of Deep Trade Agreements," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 34055.
    5. A. Belloni & D. Chen & V. Chernozhukov & C. Hansen, 2012. "Sparse Models and Methods for Optimal Instruments With an Application to Eminent Domain," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 80(6), pages 2369-2429, November.
    6. Rod Falvey & Neil Foster-McGregor, 2022. "The breadth of preferential trade agreements and the margins of exports," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 158(1), pages 181-251, February.
    7. Baier, Scott L. & Yotov, Yoto V. & Zylkin, Thomas, 2019. "On the widely differing effects of free trade agreements: Lessons from twenty years of trade integration," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 206-226.
    8. Weidner, Martin & Zylkin, Thomas, 2021. "Bias and consistency in three-way gravity models," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    9. Kaspar Wuthrich & Ying Zhu, 2019. "Omitted variable bias of Lasso-based inference methods: A finite sample analysis," Papers 1903.08704, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2021.
    10. 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.
    11. Baier, Scott L. & Bergstrand, Jeffrey H., 2007. "Do free trade agreements actually increase members' international trade?," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(1), pages 72-95, March.
    12. Zou, Hui, 2006. "The Adaptive Lasso and Its Oracle Properties," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 101, pages 1418-1429, December.
    13. Friedman, Jerome H. & Hastie, Trevor & Tibshirani, Rob, 2010. "Regularization Paths for Generalized Linear Models via Coordinate Descent," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 33(i01).
    14. Baier, Scott L. & Bergstrand, Jeffrey H. & Feng, Michael, 2014. "Economic integration agreements and the margins of international trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(2), pages 339-350.
    15. Tristan Kohl & Steven Brakman & Harry Garretsen, 2016. "Do Trade Agreements Stimulate International Trade Differently? Evidence from 296 Trade Agreements," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(1), pages 97-131, January.
    16. Hansen, Christian B., 2007. "Asymptotic properties of a robust variance matrix estimator for panel data when T is large," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 141(2), pages 597-620, December.
    17. Mario Larch & Joschka Wanner & Yoto V. Yotov & Thomas Zylkin, 2019. "Currency Unions and Trade: A PPML Re‐assessment with High‐dimensional Fixed Effects," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 81(3), pages 487-510, June.
    18. Swati Dhingra & Rebecca Freeman & Eleonora Mavroeidi, 2018. "Beyond tariff reductions: what extra boost from trade agreement provisions?," CEP Discussion Papers dp1532, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    19. 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.
    20. Sergio Correia & Paulo Guimarães & Tom Zylkin, 2020. "Fast Poisson estimation with high-dimensional fixed effects," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 20(1), pages 95-115, March.
    21. Gourieroux, Christian & Monfort, Alain & Trognon, Alain, 1984. "Pseudo Maximum Likelihood Methods: Applications to Poisson Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(3), pages 701-720, May.
    22. Sendhil Mullainathan & Jann Spiess, 2017. "Machine Learning: An Applied Econometric Approach," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 31(2), pages 87-106, Spring.
    23. Hofmann,Claudia & Osnago,Alberto & Ruta,Michele, 2017. "Horizontal depth : a new database on the content of preferential trade agreements," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7981, The World Bank.
    24. Hui Zou & Trevor Hastie, 2005. "Addendum: Regularization and variable selection via the elastic net," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 67(5), pages 768-768, November.
    25. Gaure, Simen, 2013. "OLS with multiple high dimensional category variables," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 8-18.
    26. Hui Zou & Trevor Hastie, 2005. "Regularization and variable selection via the elastic net," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 67(2), pages 301-320, April.
    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. Gordeev, Stepan & Steinbach, Sandro, 2024. "Determinants of PTA design: Insights from machine learning," International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 178(C).
    2. Jeffrey H. Bergstrand & Stephen R. Cray & Antoine Gervais, 2023. "Increasing Marginal Costs, Firm Heterogeneity,and the Gains from "Deep" International Trade Agreements," Cahiers de recherche 23-01, Departement d'économique de l'École de gestion à l'Université de Sherbrooke.
    3. Bergstrand, Jeffrey H. & Cray, Stephen R. & Gervais, Antoine, 2023. "Increasing marginal costs, firm heterogeneity, and the gains from “deep” international trade agreements," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    4. Sharadendu Sharma & Yadnesh P. Mundhada & Rahul Arora, 2023. "Which Combination of Trade Provisions Promotes Trade in Value‐Added? An Application of Machine Learning to Cross‐Country Data," Economic Papers, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 42(4), pages 332-346, December.
    5. Kim, Dongin & Steinbach, Sandro, 2022. "Preferential Trading in Agricultural and Food Products: New Insights from a Structural Gravity Analysis and Machine Learning," 2022 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Anaheim, California 322200, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    6. Nathapornpan Piyaareekul Uttama, 2023. "Revisiting the Impacts of COVID-19 Government Policies and Trade Measures on Trade Flows: A Focus on RCEP Nations," Working Papers DP-2023-17, Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA).

    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. Weidner, Martin & Zylkin, Thomas, 2021. "Bias and consistency in three-way gravity models," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    2. Katharina Längle, 2020. "Upgrading of Exports: Does the Integration into Trade Agreements Pave the Way to Product Upgrading?," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 20006, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.
    3. Díaz-Mora Carmen & Esteve-Pérez Silviano & Gil-Pareja Salvador, 2024. "Exploring the Heterogeneous Impact of Trade Agreements on Trade: Depth Matters," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment Journal, De Gruyter, vol. 18(1), pages 1-13, January.
    4. Katharina Längle, 2020. "Upgrading of Exports: Does the Integration into Trade Agreements Pave the Way to Product Upgrading?," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-02899973, HAL.
    5. Katharina Längle, 2020. "Upgrading of Exports: Does the Integration into Trade Agreements Pave the Way to Product Upgrading?," Post-Print halshs-02899973, HAL.
    6. Katharina Längle, 2020. "Upgrading of Exports: Does the Integration into Trade Agreements Pave the Way to Product Upgrading?," Working Papers hal-02548689, HAL.
    7. Katharina Längle, 2020. "Upgrading of Exports: Does the Integration into Trade Agreements Pave the Way to Product Upgrading?," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) hal-02548689, HAL.
    8. Beniamino Quintieri & Giovanni Stamato, 2023. "Are preferential agreements beneficial to EU trade? New evidence from the EU–South Korea treaty," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(12), pages 3511-3541, December.
    9. Swati Dhingra & Rebecca Freeman & Hanwei Huang, 2023. "The Impact of Non‐tariff Barriers on Trade and Welfare," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 90(357), pages 140-177, January.
    10. Timini, Jacopo & Viani, Francesca, 2022. "A highway across the Atlantic? Trade and welfare effects of the EU-Mercosur agreement," International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 291-308.
    11. Rod Falvey & Neil Foster-McGregor, 2022. "The breadth of preferential trade agreements and the margins of exports," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 158(1), pages 181-251, February.
    12. Baier, Scott L. & Yotov, Yoto V. & Zylkin, Thomas, 2019. "On the widely differing effects of free trade agreements: Lessons from twenty years of trade integration," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 206-226.
    13. Achim Ahrens & Christian B. Hansen & Mark E. Schaffer, 2020. "lassopack: Model selection and prediction with regularized regression in Stata," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 20(1), pages 176-235, March.
    14. Mario Larch & Aiko F. Schmeißer & Joschka Wanner, 2021. "A Tale of (almost) 1001 Coefficients: The Deep and Heterogeneous Effects of the EU‐Turkey Customs Union," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(2), pages 242-260, March.
    15. French, Scott & Zylkin, Tom, 2024. "The effects of free trade agreements on product-level trade," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 162(C).
    16. Heid, Benedikt & Stähler, Frank, 2024. "Structural gravity and the gains from trade under imperfect competition: Quantifying the effects of the European Single Market," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 131(C).
    17. Claire Brunel & Thomas Zylkin, 2022. "Do cross‐border patents promote trade?," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 55(1), pages 379-418, February.
    18. Peiró-Palomino, Jesús & Rodríguez-Crespo, Ernesto & Suárez-Varela, Marta, 2022. "Do countries with higher institutional quality transition to cleaner trade?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 201(C).
    19. Rebecca Freeman & Samuel Pienknagura, 2019. "Are all trade agreements equal? The role of distance in shaping the effect of economic integration agreements on trade flows," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 155(2), pages 257-285, May.
    20. Koen Jochmans & Vincenzo Verardi, 2022. "Instrumental‐variable estimation of exponential‐regression models with two‐way fixed effects with an application to gravity equations," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 37(6), pages 1121-1137, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    International Trade and Trade Rules; De Facto Governments; Economics and Finance of Public Institution Development; State Owned Enterprise Reform; Public Sector Administrative and Civil Service Reform; Public Sector Administrative & Civil Service Reform; Democratic Government; Competition Policy; Competitiveness and Competition Policy; Trade Facilitation; Health and Sanitation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F14 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Empirical Studies of Trade
    • F15 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Economic Integration
    • F17 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade Forecasting and Simulation

    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:wbk:wbrwps:9629. 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: Roula I. Yazigi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dvewbus.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.