Exploring the geographical bias of manufactured exports in MERCOSUR

We propose a novel approach to understand the industrialization pattern of MERCOSUR countries during the last 60 years. We perform an index to measure the geographical bias of manufactured exports between the region and the world and show that regional trade agreements allowed MERCOSUR countries to decrease de bias and increase competitiveness. However, we show that in recent years the bias deepened in favor of exporting to the region a higher proportion of manufactured goods. Our main result is that these economies present a U-shape geographical bias in manufactured exports associated with a bimodal distribution of breaks. Furthermore, we observe that the 1980 and 2000s were the most relevant periods for defining the region trends.