School of International Business, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu, China.
School of Economics and Management, Panzhihua University, Panzhihua, Sichuan, China.
PLoS One. 2021 Mar 30;16(3):e0249118. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0249118. eCollection 2021.
Trade agreements are thought to raise trade integration, but existing preferential trade agreements (PTAs) are insufficient in measuring market access of products. This study develops a product-based coverage index of PTAs using the World Trade Organization (WTO) preferential trade agreements and calculates bilateral trade measures using the EORA multi-regional input-output (MRIO) tables covering 189 countries worldwide over the period 1990-2015; the structural gravity model is employed to test how PTAs affect bilateral trade. Our findings show that countries sharing a common PTA could boost the trade volume compared to those without PTAs, supporting the trade creation effect. However, the trade promotion effect of the product-based coverage index of PTAs is significant only if the member countries are low-and middle-income countries. Further, the wide range of product liberalization brought by PTAs can promote global production networks by stimulating the trade of intermediate goods. Our results are important for understanding the market access effect of PTAs with the increasing development of trade integration and global value chains (GVCs).
贸易协定被认为可以提高贸易一体化水平，但现有的优惠贸易协定（PTA）在衡量产品的市场准入方面还不够充分。本研究使用世界贸易组织（WTO）的优惠贸易协定开发了一个基于产品的 PTA 覆盖指数，并利用 EORA 多区域投入产出（MRIO）表计算了 1990 年至 2015 年期间涵盖全球 189 个国家的双边贸易措施；采用结构引力模型检验了 PTA 如何影响双边贸易。我们的研究结果表明，与没有 PTA 的国家相比，拥有共同 PTA 的国家可以增加贸易量，支持贸易创造效应。然而，只有在成员国为中低收入国家的情况下，基于产品的 PTA 覆盖指数的贸易促进效应才显著。此外，PTA 带来的广泛产品自由化可以通过刺激中间品贸易来促进全球生产网络。随着贸易一体化和全球价值链（GVC）的不断发展，我们的研究结果对于理解 PTA 的市场准入效应具有重要意义。
