TY - JOUR AU - Barboza, Gustavo AU - Trejos, Sandra PY - 2010/03/15 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - Economic Growth Creation Or Diversion? The Record of Trade Agreements In Latin America JF - Journal of Business Strategies JA - J Bus Strategies VL - 27 IS - 1 SE - Research Articles DO - 10.54155/jbs.27.1.93-122 UR - https://jbs-ojs-shsu.tdl.org/jbs/article/view/115 SP - 93-122 AB - <p>This paper examines the effects of Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) and<br>GATT/WTO membership on economic growth using a sample of seventeen Latin<br>American countries for the period 1950-2004. In general, the evidence indicates<br>that the proliferation of bilateral and multi country regional and extra regional trade<br>agreements has not resulted in faster economic growth. On the contrary, we find that<br>PTAs and WTO only have a weak positive effect on increasing trade openness; but<br>this relationship does not translate into faster economic growth when controlling for<br>capital, labor force and trade openness. These results are robust to both static and<br>dynamic model specifications, indicating that trade openness has a positive effect on<br>per capita output growth, but PTA and WTO membership do not. Integration via de<br>facto increases output growth while integration via de jure does not. Based on the<br>results, PTAs create a net diversion effect on economic growth.</p> ER -