Chile's Regional Arrangements and the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas : The Importance of Market Access

Harrison, Glenn W. ; Rutherford, Thomas F. ; Tarr, David G.

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: ADDITIVE REGIONALISM;    FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS;    FTAA;    FREE TRADE AGREEMENT OF THE AMERICAS;    GLOBAL FREE TRADE;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-2634
RP-ID  :  WPS2634

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Using a multisector, computable generalequilibrium model, the authors examine Chile's strategyof negotiating bilateral free trade agreements with all ofits significant trading partners (referring to this policyas additive regionalism). They also evaluate the Free TradeAgreement of the Americas (FTAA) and global free trade.Among Chile's bilateral regional agreements, onlyChile's agreements with "Northern" partnersprovide enough market access to offset the costs to Chile oftrade diversion. Because of preferential market access,however, additive regionalism is likely to provide Chilewith many times as many gains as the static welfare gainsfrom unilateral free trade. The authors find that at leastone partner country loses from each of the regional tradeagreements they consider, and excluded countries as a groupthey always lose. They estimate that the FTAA produces largewelfare gains for the members, with the European Union beingthe big loser. Gains to the world from global free trade areestimated to be at least 36 times greater than gains fromthe FTAA. Even countries of the Americas in aggregate gainmore from global free trade than from the FTAA.