This paper studies the impact of the process of accession to the WTO on growth rates in a sample of 150 economies. Unlike GATT-era accessions, WTO accessions involve reforms that extend beyond conventional trade liberalization measures. Using information on the pace of negotiations and requests in the working party's meetings, we construct an index that tracks the progress of reforms in the pre-accession period. We estimate that economies that implemented reforms and made deeper commitments during their WTO accession negotiations grew on average 1.5 percentage points faster than they otherwise would have. These results are robust to instrumental variable estimation and falsification tests.
Authors
André Brotto, Adam Jakubik, Roberta Piermartini, Fulvio Silvy
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.5089/9798400289910.001
- ISBN
- 9798400289910
- ISSN
- 1018-5941
- Issue
- 207
- Pages
- 46
- Published in
- United States of America
- Series
- Working Paper No. 2024/207
- Stock No
- WPIEA2024207
- Volume
- 2024
Table of Contents
- André Brotto Adam Jakubik Roberta Piermartini Fulvio Silvy 1
- WP24 1
- Prepared by André Brotto Adam Jakubik Roberta Piermartini and Fulvio Silvy 3
- Contents 4
- Introduction 6
- GATT and WTO Accessions The Evolving Nature 9
- Sample size 12
- Tracking commitments and reforms during WTO accession negotiations 12
- Empirical Results 19
- Data and empirical specification 19
- Benchmark results 21
- Robustness Checks and Endogeneity Concerns 26
- Endogeneity Concerns Related to Political Economy 26
- Self-Selection into Accession 26
- Instrumental Variables 27
- Conclusions 30
- Annexes 31
- Annex 1 Figure 2 regression results a replication of Tang and Wei 2009 31
- Annex 2 Details of the Pre-Accession Index 32
- Annex 3 Examples of Questions and Answers Leading to Reforms 34
- Example 1 Viet Nam 34
- Example 2 Comoros 36
- Annex 4 Economies in the estimation sample 39
- Annex 5 First Stage IV Results 40
- Annex 6 Falsification Tests Description 41
- References 42
