Résumé
As countries turn more to regionalism as a means of forwarding co-operation on trade rules and other areas of policymaking, governments are increasingly incorporating rules on investment into regional trade agreements (RTAs). The Asia-Pacific region is no exception, with many innovative agreements that include disciplines on investment protection and non-discrimination. We analyse the economic consequences of including investment provisions in trade agreements by creating an index of the extensiveness of investment provisions in RTAs and then using that index in a gravity model framework of trade and investment. The results indicate that investment provisions are positively associated with trade and, to an even greater extent, investment flows. Further, we observe an insignificant effect of bilateral investment treaties on investment flows, suggesting either that substantive investment provisions in RTAs impact trade and FDI flows more profoundly, or that the combination of substantive investment rules and provisions liberalising other parts of the economy jointly impact trade and investment more significantly.
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Extrait
The Economic Impact of Investment Provisions in Regional Trade Agreements*
1 Introduction
Today, almost 40% of all trade can be attributed to international exchanges among members of regional trade agreements (RTAs) (WORLD BANK, 2005). Taking into account the RTAs currently under negotiation or in the process of ratification, analysts expect the number of RTAs in force to grow from 139 in mid-2005 to around 300 in 2008 (CRAWFORD and FIORENTINO, 2005). One distinguishing feature of recent RTAs is their wide-ranging coverage and complexity. Tariff reductions are accompanied by provisions on non-tariff barriers (NTBs), customs procedures, sanitary and phytosanitary measures and intellectual property protection. Most of the new agreements cover trade in services, and a number of regulatory issues that go beyond multilaterally agreed disciplines - such as government procurement, competition policy and the environment - are also frequently addressed. The proliferation of RTAs between developing and developed countries and their coverage of new policy areas beyond trade is one characteristic of what some call "new regionalism" (ETHIER 1998, CRAWFORD and FIORENTINO 2005).Countries are increasingly incorporating investment, which has traditionally been covered via separate bilateral investment treaties (BITs), in many recent RTAs. Thus, it is not surprising that the number of new BITs has been receding since the mid-1990s, while at the same time the number of RTAs with substantive investment provisions has been rising. At the end of 2005, UNCTAD estimates that around 220 RTAs contained investment provisions (UNCTAD 2005). Since WTO Members removed investment from the Doha Round negotiating agenda, it is important for policymakers to understand the consequences of including "new" provisions - such as investment - at the regional level. This paper contributes to the existing literature by exploring the drivers of trade and investment flows under new regionalism as well as the effects of substantive investment provisions on trade and investment flows.This paper analyses investment provisions in all types of RTAs: RTAs between developed and developing countries' (North-South) in addition to RTAs strictly signed among developed countries (North-North) or developing countries (South-South). There are, however, very few North-North trade agreements that include investment provisions2. For developed countries, investment provisions are more likely to be found in other international instruments, such as the OECD Code of Liberalisation of Capital Movements or in BITs. And while South-South RTAs increasingly include investment provisions, they are either very recent, currently under negotiation or their investment/services chapters are not yet complete. A scarcity of data also complicates the analysis of South-South investment.Only trade agreements with "substantive" investment provisions have been included in the study. While it is difficult to qualitatively judge the degree to which various investment provisions a...Voir le contenu complet de ce document
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