Deep Trade Agreements and Global Value Chains

Laget, Edith ; Osnago, Alberto ; Rocha, Nadia ; Ruta, Michele

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: TRADE AGREEMENT;    GLOBAL VALUE CHAINS;    DEEP TRADE AGREEMENTS;    REGIONAL INTEGRATION;    COMPETITION POLICY;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-8491
RP-ID  :  WPS8491

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Preferential trade agreements havebecome deeper over time, often encompassing policy areasthat go beyond traditional trade policy, such as investment,competition, and intellectual property rights protection. Inthe literature, a prominent argument why countries sign"deep" agreements is to promote and facilitate theoperation of global value chains. This paper exploits a newdata set on the content of trade agreements and data ontrade in value added and in parts and components, toquantify the impact of the depth of trade agreements onbilateral cross-border production linkages. The results showthat adding a policy area to a trade agreement increases thedomestic value added of intermediates (forward global valuechain linkages) and the foreign value added of intermediates(backward global value chain linkages) by 0.48 and 0.38percent, respectively. At the sectoral level, the positiveimpact of deep trade agreements is higher for highervalue-added industries, suggesting that deep agreements helpcountries to integrate in industries with higher levels ofvalue added. For a larger sample of countries and years, theresults confirm that an additional provision in a tradeagreement increases bilateral trade in parts and componentsby 0.3 percent. The content of trade agreements also mattersfor global value chain integration, but the impact varies byincome group. Provisions outside the current mandate of theWorld Trade Organization (investment and competition policy)drive the effect of trade agreements on North-South trade inparts and components. Provisions under the current WorldTrade Organization mandate (tariff reduction and customsfacilitation) drive the effect of trade agreements onSouth-South trade in parts and components.