False Friends? Empirical Evidence on Trade Policy Substitution in Regional Trade Agreements
43 Pages Posted: 24 May 2016 Last revised: 9 Sep 2017
Date Written: May 23, 2016
Abstract
In this paper, we examine the interplay of regional economic integration and the use of bilateral antidumping (AD) measures. Our empirical analysis brings three central findings to light: (i) We find that regional trade agreements (RTAs) generally reduce the likelihood of AD activity among integration partners. (ii) In addition, an improvement in the tariff treatment between trading partners — regardless of whether expressed as the directly faced tariff or as a tariff margin — generally leads to a lower likelihood of bilateral AD activity. (iii) Regarding the interaction of both events, however, a reciprocally higher tariff margin between integration partners leads to a higher likelihood of bilateral AD activity than an equal tariff margin among non-integration trading partners. The latter effect seems to be primarily driven by those RTAs with a participation of “South” countries.
Keywords: Antidumping, trade liberalization, regional economic integration, tariff margin, panel data, probit
JEL Classification: F13, F14, F15
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation