The Impact of Trade Liberalization on the Import Growth: Evidence from Four Recently Acceded Members of WTO
Abstract
This paper intends to show that trade liberalization has had a notable effect on the import growth of four developing countries that have joined the WTO in the year 2000: Albania, Georgia, Jordan and Oman. The Random Effects (RE) estimator, the Fixed Effects (FE) estimator and the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) have been applied to the panel data models and a negative coefficient has resulted for the tariffs imposed on the imports, which confirms that tariff barriers and import growth move in different directions. The results also indicate that joining the WTO and growth in domestic income have a positive effect on the import growth, while both real effective exchange rate and foreign exchange reserves have negative effects on the import growth. Therefore, trade liberalization can be an effective policy for increasing the import growth in the selected developing countries.References
M. Adler and G. Hufbauer. “Policy Liberalization and US Merchandise Trade Growth, 1980–2006.” Peterson Institute for International Economics, working paper 09-2, 2009.
M. Alessandrini, B. Fattouh, B. Ferrarini and P. Scaramozzino. “Tariff liberalization and trade specialization: Lessons from India.” Journal of Comparative Economics, vol. 39, pp. 499–513, 2011.
P. V. Amini, A. Shahabinia, H. Jafari, O. Karami, and A. Azizi. “Estimating Conservation Value of Lighvan Choy River Using Contingent Valuation Method.” Environmental Research, vol. 6(12), pp. 173-82, 2016.
M. Amiti and J. Konings. “Trade Liberalization, Intermediate Inputs, and Productivity: Evidence from Indonesia.” The American Economic Review, vol. 97(5), pp. 1611-38, 2007.
R. A. Blecker and C. A. Ibarra. “Trade liberalization and the balance of payments constraint with intermediate imports: The case of Mexico revisited.” Journal of Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, vol. 25, pp. 33–47, 2013.
S. Edwards. “Openness, trade liberalization and growth in developing countries.” Journal of Economic Literature, vol. 31, pp. 1358–93, 1993.
M. N. Harris and L. Mayas. “A Comparative Analysis of Different IV and GMM Estimators of Dynamic Panel Data Models.” International Statistical Review, vol. 72(3), pp. 397–408, 2004.
M. M. Hoque and Y. Zulkornain. “Impacts of trade liberalization on aggregate import in Bangladesh: An ARDL Bounds test approach.” Journal of Asian Economics, vol. 21, pp. 37–52, 2010.
O. Karami and M. Mahmoudi. “Estimating Trade-Related Adjustment Costs in the Agricultural Sector in Iran.” Scientific Journal of Agricultural Economics, vol. 2(1), 2013.
O. Karami, I. Saleh, H. Rafiee and N. M. Hosseinpour. “Estimating Recreational Value of Nazhvan Park Using Contingent Valuation Method.” Environmental Research, vol. 7(13), pp. 85-92, 2016.
A. O. Krueger. “Why trade liberalization is good for growth.” Economic Journal, vol. 108(450), pp. 1513–22, 1998.
J. S. Mah. “Import Demand, Liberalization, and Economic development.” Journal of Policy Modeling, vol. 21(4), pp. 497–503, 1999.
M. Mahmoudi. (2018). “Robert J. Gordon: ‘the rise and fall of American growth: the US standard of living since the civil war’.” Economics of Innovation and New Technology, DOI: 10.1080/10438599.2018.1496599.
M. Pringle and M. Mahmoudi. (2016). “Economic Growth and Government Size.” Available at: http://controller.nv.gov/FinancialReports/SupportingDocumentation/Economic%20Growth%20and%20Government %20Size.pdf.
A. U. Santos-Paulino. “Trade liberalization and economic performance: Theory and evidence for developing countries.” World Economy, vol. 28(6), pp. 783–820, 2005.
J. M. Wooldridge. (2002). “Econometric Analysis of Cross Section and Panel Data.” Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A.: The MIT Press.
World Trade Organization. (2000). “Report of the Working Party on the Accession of Albania to the World Trade Organization.” WT/ACC/ALB/51.
World Trade Organization. (1999). “Report of the Working Party on the Accession of Georgia to the World Trade Organization.” WT/ACC/GEO/31.
World Trade Organization. (1999). “Report of the Working Party on the Accession of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan to the World Trade Organization.” WT/ACC/JOR/33.
World Trade Organization. (2000). “Report of the Working Party on the Accession of Oman to the World Trade Organization.” WT/ACC/OMN/26.
www.wto.org
Authors who submit papers with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
- By submitting the processing fee, it is understood that the author has agreed to our terms and conditions which may change from time to time without any notice.
- It should be clear for authors that the Editor In Chief is responsible for the final decision about the submitted papers; have the right to accept\reject any paper. The Editor In Chief will choose any option from the following to review the submitted papers:A. send the paper to two reviewers, if the results were negative by one reviewer and positive by the other one; then the editor may send the paper for third reviewer or he take immediately the final decision by accepting\rejecting the paper. The Editor In Chief will ask the selected reviewers to present the results within 7 working days, if they were unable to complete the review within the agreed period then the editor have the right to resend the papers for new reviewers using the same procedure. If the Editor In Chief was not able to find suitable reviewers for certain papers then he have the right to accept\reject the paper.B. sends the paper to a selected editorial board member(s). C. the Editor In Chief himself evaluates the paper.
- Author will take the responsibility what so ever if any copyright infringement or any other violation of any law is done by publishing the research work by the author
- Before publishing, author must check whether this journal is accepted by his employer, or any authority he intends to submit his research work. we will not be responsible in this matter.
- If at any time, due to any legal reason, if the journal stops accepting manuscripts or could not publish already accepted manuscripts, we will have the right to cancel all or any one of the manuscripts without any compensation or returning back any kind of processing cost.
- The cost covered in the publication fees is only for online publication of a single manuscript.