| How does a country's participation in a trading bloc of equal or unequal partners, in terms of GDP/capita, affect its economic growth? Does this effect differ if we look at relatively small or relatively large countries? Are countries in a trading block of equal partners more likely to uniformly grow or does having a large partner help? Are economically powerful countries more likely to draw their partners up the growth scale or use them to advance on that scale themselves? In order to answer these empirical questions I use panel data from 1985 to 2004 on countries that are members of RTAs. I find that membership in trade blocs of unequal partners leads to higher GDP growth rates than membership in trade blocs of equal partners. The results also indicate that large, more developed countries tend to benefit more than developing countries from membership in such agreements. |
