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PDF, GB, 139 p., 796 Ko - Femise

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n<br />

lnTijt = ∑<br />

k=<br />

1<br />

β RTAijt + α1lnYit + α2lnYjt + α3lnKit/Lit + α4lnKjt/Ljt + α5lnDISTANCEij +<br />

k<br />

α6CONTIGUITYij + α7LANGUAGEij + α8COLONYij + α9COLONIZERij + ui + uj + uij<br />

+ vt + εijt. (1)<br />

where: Tijt is the value of trade flows (exports and imports, respectively) between<br />

countries i and j in year t; RTAijt is a dummy variable indicating whether countries i and<br />

j are both the members of a bilateral or a plurilateral regional preferential trading<br />

agreement in year t; Yit and Yjt are the levels of GDP in countries i and j in year t,<br />

respectively; Kit/Lit and Kjt/Ljt are the capital per worker stocks in countries i and j in<br />

year t, respectively; DISTANCEij is the distance between countries i and j;<br />

CONTIGUITYij is a dummy variable indicating whether countries i and j share a<br />

common border; LANGUAGEij is a dummy variables indicating whether at least 9% of<br />

the population in countries i and j speak a common language (for the MPCs two other<br />

dummy variables were used instead: ARABICij and TURKISHij are two dummy<br />

variables indicating whether countries i and j share a common language); COLONYij is<br />

a dummy variable indicating whether countries i and j were in a colonial relationship;<br />

COLONIZERij is a dummy variable indicating whether countries i and j shared a<br />

common colonizer (after 1945 the CEE countries being in the Soviet Union’s zone of<br />

influence); ui and uj are the individual fixed effects for countries i and j, respectively; uij<br />

is the country-pair specific effect; vt is the time specific effect, and εijt is the error term<br />

that satisfies the standard properties.<br />

The preferential trading agreements once implemented should increase bilateral trade of<br />

both trading partners in the case of reciprocity, hence βi > 0 for all effective agreements.<br />

All theoretical models predict that trade flows should increase with the economic size of<br />

both trading partners, hence α1, α2 > 0. However, the impact of the factor proportion<br />

variables cannot be a priori determined as it varies across various models of incomplete<br />

specialization in production and could be either positive, negative or none depending of<br />

the extent of product differentiation. Therefore, the signs of the estimated parameters on<br />

the factor proportion variables α3 , α4 and their statistical significance have to be<br />

determined empirically.<br />

26

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