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Do Free Trade Agreements Increase Economic Growth of the Member Countries?

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  • Hur, Jung
  • Park, Cheolbeom

Abstract

This paper assesses whether a bilateral FTA raises the growth rates of the two countries engaging in the FTA. A nonparametric matching approach, which imposes no specific functional forms and can be applied to a broad range of data structures, is employed to estimate the FTA effect on the growth. We find that FTAs exert insignificant effects on aggregated growth from one to 10year period after launch, but detect a significant upward trend in the gap between the growth rates of per capita GDP within a bilateral FTA. This implies uneven FTA effects across countries within an FTA.

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  • Hur, Jung & Park, Cheolbeom, 2012. "Do Free Trade Agreements Increase Economic Growth of the Member Countries?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(7), pages 1283-1294.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:40:y:2012:i:7:p:1283-1294
    DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2011.12.006
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    20. Victoria Pistikou, 2020. "The Impact of CEFTA on Exports, Economic Growth and Development," International Journal of Business and Economic Sciences Applied Research (IJBESAR), Democritus University of Thrace (DUTH), Kavala Campus, Greece, vol. 13(3), pages 15-31, December.
    21. Antonio Martuscelli & Michael Gasiorek, 2019. "Regional Integration And Poverty: A Review Of The Transmission Channels And The Evidence," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(2), pages 431-457, April.
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    23. Kis, Katalin, 2017. "A Kelet-afrikai Közösség belső kereskedelmére ható tényezők [Factors determining the intra-regional trade of the East African Community]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(9), pages 943-969.
    24. Tareg Ghazi Alghabbabsheh & Saleh Saud AlSaif & Md Saiful Islam & Tareq Saeed AlShammari & Ali M A Mahmoud, 2022. "Have Bilateral Free Trade Agreements (BFTAs) been beneficial? Lessons learned from 11 U.S. BFTAs between 1992 and 2017," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(4), pages 1-21, April.

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