Dear colleagues,

The Department of Economics cordially invites you to the WU Economics Research Seminar on Wednesday, December 4^th, with

Jordi Paniagua

(University of Valencia)

on

"Do Deep Trade Agreements' Provisions Actually Increase -or Decrease- Trade and/or FDI?"

Abstract: Over the past 30 years, "deep trade" agreements (DTAs) have proliferated. DTAs go beyond traditional preferential trade agreements historically focused narrowly on reducing tariff rates on goods trade, influencing the behavior of exporting firms and multinational enterprises (MNEs) via a broad swath of "provisions." However, estimation of the individual effects of several hundred provisions in DTAs on international trade flows using the World Bank's DTA database remains in its infancy. While the World Bank's database categorizes substantive vs. non-substantive provisions and — within these groups — liberalizations vs. obligations, this paper is the first to use the Shapley Value approach from cooperative game theory to generate unbiased estimates of the signs of all individual provisions' partial effects to quantitatively categorize provisions between positive effects (so-called "liberalizations") and negative effects (so-called "obligations"). This approach allows us to generate estimates of the positive-versus-negative effects of provisions, an aspect that has been overlooked in the literature, while still addressing challenges posed by omitted-variables, over-aggregation, and multi-collinearity biases. Second, in contrast to most studies that focus exclusively on trade-flow effects of DTAs, we introduce a new data set on MNEs' activities to inform us of DTA provisions' effects on MNEs' bilateral FDI, costs, employment, revenues, and assets — alongside DTA provisions' effects on trade flows — which are of potential importance to MNEs' managements and government policymakers. Third, among numerous empirical findings, we find convincing evidence that provisions that positively (negatively) affect trade flows also negatively (positively) affect FDI flows, suggesting that trade and FDI are predominantly substitutes with respect to DTAs. Finally, we provide computable general equilibrium welfare estimates associated with several policy-relevant counterfactual exercises.

Date: Wednesday, December 4^th

Time: 4.30 to 6 pm (CET)

Location: building D1, first floor, room D1.1.078

With best regards,

Harald Oberhofer

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Univ.-Prof. Dr. Harald Oberhofer

Department of Economics 

WU Vienna University of Economics and Business

Phone: +43/1/31336-4984

Email: harald.oberhofer@wu.ac.at

https://www.wu.ac.at/en/economics/people/oberhofer-h

Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO)

Phone: +43/1/7982601-468

Email: harald.oberhofer@wifo.ac.at

http://www.wifo.ac.at/harald_oberhofer