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Small Countries and Preferential Trade Agreements: How Severe is the Innocent Bystander Problem?
Author(s) -
Kose M. Ayhan,
Riezman Raymond
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
pacific economic review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.34
H-Index - 33
eISSN - 1468-0106
pISSN - 1361-374X
DOI - 10.1111/1468-0106.00022
Subject(s) - economics , international economics , context (archaeology) , international free trade agreement , bystander effect , developing country , welfare , international trade , rules of origin , free trade , economic growth , market economy , paleontology , immunology , biology
In this paper the welfare implications of preferential trade agreements (PTA) are examined from the perspective of small countries in the context of a multi‐country general equilibrium model. We calibrate our model to represent one relatively small country and two symmetric big countries. We consider two cases. In one case, the small country is an ‘innocent bystander’, that is, it is left out of a PTA between the two large countries. In the second case, the small country signs a PTA with one of the large countries. We simulate the model and calculate consumption allocations, prices, trade volume, and tariffs in these two cases considering three different equilibria: free trade (FT), free trade association (FTA) and customs union (CU). We find that free trade is the best outcome for the small country. If the large country PTA takes the form of a CU then the cost of being an ‘innocent bystander’ is very large. If it is an FTA then the cost of being an ‘innocent bystander’ is relatively modest. In fact, the small country prefers to be an ‘innocent bystander’ to being a member of an FTA with one of the large countries.