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| Laurent Didier |
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| ''Do environmental provisions in regional trade agreements affect trade in services?'' |
| ( 2018, Vol. 38 No.2 ) |
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| Liberalization of services trade through regional trade agreements (RTAs) represent a significant environmental concern where more and more RTAs include environmental provisions. Do environmental provisions in RTAs improve or undermine trade between member countries? I investigate the unexplored relationship between the number of environmental provisions concluded by trading partners and RTAs on services trade. I focus on three main European trade agreements concerning services: the European Economic Area (1994), the European Union (1995) and the European Free Trade Association (2002). A theory-based and robust gravity model specification including lagged terms is used with sectoral disaggregation for services trade on the 1981-2010 period. The results underline the statistically significant effect of environmental provisions in RTAs covering services on trade with a higher magnitude for deeper environmental provisions. Different trade impacts also appear between these European RTAs across sector-specific services trade and according to the depth of the environmental provisions. |
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| Keywords: environmental provisions, RTAs, trade, services, gravity |
JEL: F1 - Trade: General
F5 - International Relations and International Political Economy: General |
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| Manuscript Received : Dec 20 2017 | | Manuscript Accepted : Apr 15 2018 |
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