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The impact of trade agreements on consumerwelfare-evidence from the EU common external trade policy

Berlingieri, Giuseppe; Breinlich, Holger; Dhingra, Swati

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Authors

Giuseppe Berlingieri

Holger Breinlich

Swati Dhingra



Abstract

© The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of European Economic Association. All rights reserved. This paper estimates the consumer welfare impact of the new generation of trade agreements implemented by the European Union between 1993 and 2013. We decompose the overall effect into contributions of changes in prices, quality and variety. Estimating trade elasticities for narrow product categories of EU imports, we infer quality from data on imported values and volumes. For the EU as a whole, we find that trade agreements increased quality by 7% on average but did not affect prices or variety. This translates into a cumulative reduction in the consumer price index of 0.24% over our sample period. We also find a high degree of impact heterogeneity across EU countries, trading partners, and the type of trade agreement, with high-income EU countries seeing much stronger quality increases and larger overall consumer benefits.

Citation

Berlingieri, G., Breinlich, H., & Dhingra, S. (2018). The impact of trade agreements on consumerwelfare-evidence from the EU common external trade policy. Journal of European Economic Association, 16(6), 1881-1928. https://doi.org/10.1093/jeea/jvx053

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Aug 17, 2017
Online Publication Date Feb 26, 2018
Publication Date Dec 1, 2018
Deposit Date Aug 30, 2017
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal Journal of the European Economic Association
Electronic ISSN 1542-4774
Publisher Oxford University Press
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 16
Issue 6
Pages 1881-1928
DOI https://doi.org/10.1093/jeea/jvx053
Public URL https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/916425
Publisher URL https://academic.oup.com/jeea/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jeea/jvx053/4909736?guestAccessKey=83f7b53f-7be8-49b3-b862-01c124767cc9
Additional Information "This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in Journal of the European Economic Association following peer review. The version of record Giuseppe Berlingieri, Holger Breinlich, Swati Dhingra; The Impact of Trade Agreements on Consumer Welfare—Evidence from the EU Common External Trade Policy, Journal of the European Economic Association, , jvx053 is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1093/jeea/jvx053"

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