The aim of this thesis is to provide a comprehensive survey on the recent development of Slovak international trade in particular due to the EU accession and euro adoption. Overall, there are mostly predictions for some positive impact on Slovak trade flows stemming from these actions, however their magnitudes differ greatly. This literature review provides an overview of the main articles relevant to this topic and lists their main conclusions.

<p>Background: A large part of the daily political and economic debate in Sweden concerns the EU. One question that has been debated since the beginning of European integration is whether trade is created as a consequence of integration and, ifso, how great are the gains related to the increased trade. An equally important but maybe less debated question is whether countries outside the union are affected by the increased European integration. Is increased European integration made at the cost of countries outside the EU? </p><p>Purpose: The purpose of this study is, by calculating trade creation and trade diversion, to evaluate if a number of developing countries’ trade with Sweden has decreased after Sweden’s membership in the European Union. </p><p>Limitations: The study is limited to the years 1990-1999, and not all developing countries are included in the study. All developed countries are also omitted from the study. </p><p>Method: The empirical material consists of calculations of consumption shares for Sweden, partner countries and third countries. The method is called residual imputation, meaning that the actual evolution of the trade is compared with a hypothetical, calculated one. These calculations where made for three groups of countries, divided after GDP/capita. </p><p>Conclusions: On the aggregated level, and for the two least poor groups of countries, there is no evidence that these countries have seen their shares decreased as a consequence of Sweden entering the EU. The poorest group of countries has, however, not been able to maintain the same level of exports to Sweden after the membership.</p>

<p>In 2000 “the European Union and South Africa Free Trade Agreement” was established with</p><p>the aim to gradually increase the amount of duty-free agricultural and industrial products to</p><p>each market. The aim of this paper is to investigate if South Africa benefits from the EU-SA</p><p>Free Trade Agreement and also what impacts this agreement has on South Africa’s trade with</p><p>Southern Africa and the rest of the world. The result from the study indicates that South</p><p>Africa benefits from the agreement in terms of improve trade. The result also shows that</p><p>South Africa’s trade with some Southern African countries has been negative effected by the</p><p>agreement but it is difficult to state if this is caused by the agreement or not. The rest of the</p><p>world has not been negatively affected by the agreement.</p>

Background: A large part of the daily political and economic debate in Sweden concerns the EU. One question that has been debated since the beginning of European integration is whether trade is created as a consequence of integration and, ifso, how great are the gains related to the increased trade. An equally important but maybe less debated question is whether countries outside the union are affected by the increased European integration. Is increased European integration made at the cost of countries outside the EU? Purpose: The purpose of this study is, by calculating trade creation and trade diversion, to evaluate if a number of developing countries’ trade with Sweden has decreased after Sweden’s membership in the European Union. Limitations: The study is limited to the years 1990-1999, and not all developing countries are included in the study. All developed countries are also omitted from the study. Method: The empirical material consists of calculations of consumption shares for Sweden, partner countries and third countries. The method is called residual imputation, meaning that the actual evolution of the trade is compared with a hypothetical, calculated one. These calculations where made for three groups of countries, divided after GDP/capita. Conclusions: On the aggregated level, and for the two least poor groups of countries, there is no evidence that these countries have seen their shares decreased as a consequence of Sweden entering the EU. The poorest group of countries has, however, not been able to maintain the same level of exports to Sweden after the membership.

In 2000 “the European Union and South Africa Free Trade Agreement” was established with the aim to gradually increase the amount of duty-free agricultural and industrial products to each market. The aim of this paper is to investigate if South Africa benefits from the EU-SA Free Trade Agreement and also what impacts this agreement has on South Africa’s trade with Southern Africa and the rest of the world. The result from the study indicates that South Africa benefits from the agreement in terms of improve trade. The result also shows that South Africa’s trade with some Southern African countries has been negative effected by the agreement but it is difficult to state if this is caused by the agreement or not. The rest of the world has not been negatively affected by the agreement.

Magister Commercii - MCom / Regional integration dates back to the work of Jacob Viner who distinguished between the terms ‘trade creation’ versus ‘trade diversion’ in the context of the gains from customs unions. Since then regional trade agreements have been entered into all over the world and almost all members of the World Trade organisation are members of at least one trade agreement. Moreover, individual countries have also signed free trade agreements with countries not involved in the same regional block. Also, in this era of globalisation, the demands of the WTO often work against progress to deeper integration in the specific regions.Despite their relatively weak performance, Africa is home to the largest number of regional trade agreements where member states of a particular regional trade block also belong to anther regional block or have signed preferential trade agreements with third countries. This phenomenon of multiple memberships is particularly true of trade blocks in Southern Africa. For example, the DRC, Malawi, Angola, Madagascar, Mauritius, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe are members of SADC, but also full members of COMESA.This report presents a study on regional integration in Southern Africa and specifically focuses on the presence of overlapping memberships in Southern and Eastern Africa. It provides a descriptive overview of COMESA, the EAC, SACU and SADC where member countries of the former blocks are also members of SADC, but focuses specifically on the problems and challenges due to multiple memberships, such as different approaches to regional integration, problems related to different rules of origin and non-tariff barriers, amongst others.Thereafter the focus is on SADC as regional trade block. The report discusses the establishment of SADC, its main aims and economic performance since its inception and also the special problems and challenges, such as the multiple memberships of its members. Finally South Africa’s preferential trade agreement with the European Union is discussed as example of how multiple membership impact on the development of trade relations between member countries of SADC.

The thesis analyses the effect of the Eastern enlargement on goods flows into four CEECs. In the beginning, the Eastern enlargement and numerous related economic effects are briefly characterised. After that it focuses on trade diversion and trade creation effects, starting with a concise discussion of the traditional customs union theory and followed by the explanation of the choice of the estimation method. A gravity model applied on a panel data set is then used to model the import flows into the EU15 and the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. The results showed that a careful choice of the model specification and estimating technique is needed and the model that controlled for four sources of unobserved heterogeneity (time, country pair, importer, and exporter specific characteristics) was chosen. Based on this model's results, we could expect a significant increase of imports from EFTA into these countries but aggregately we should not expect any trade diversion as no further redirecting of import flows from the rest of the world is predicted. Eventually, some of the real trade flow developments (territorial and commodity structures and revealed comparative advantages of selected regions) are described.

The objective of this paper is to assess the bilateral exports from an origin to a destination, in the context of countries belonging to the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), and whether or not the ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (AFTA) leads to trade creation or trade diversion, or both. To study this, a panel gravity model is employed with 135 countries, from 2000-2014, using a Poisson Pseudo-Maximum Likelihood method (PPML). To study the impact of AFTA on trade creation/diversion, a set of three dummy variables are used, denoting whether the origin country belongs to ASEAN, whether the destination country belongs to ASEAN and finally, whether both origin and the destination countries belong to ASEAN. Along with AFTA, five other Regional Trade Agreements (RTA) are also taken into account. The main finding of this paper is that there is no pure trade creation nor pure trade diversion due to AFTA, but rather a significant export trade creation, that is, ASEAN’s exports to the rest of the world is positive and significant. Future policy implications could include measures to strengthen the regional economic cooperation amongst the members of ASEAN.

<p>This Bachelor thesis investigates if the Swedish trade has faced trade diversion and or trade creation after entering the European Union (EU). This is done by analyzing Sweden’s trade pattern of goods before and during the membership using a selected time-period of 1985-2004.</p><p>To be able to investigate if Sweden has faced trade diversion and trade creation we apply the Soloaga and Winters model (2000) which is based on the gravity model of trade and we modify it to fit our purpose. By using the modified version we run a pooled panel data regression where we divide the time-period into two groups, a before (1985-1994) and during (1995-2004) EU membership group and we included eight different variables to estimate trade diversion and creation. After running the pooled panel data, we could conclude that Sweden has faced 44 percent trade diversion by diverting its trade from non-members to member states in the EU. Sweden has also increased its trade to EU member states by 106 percent implying trade creation. However since we have not included an exchange rate variable these figure cannot be used as direct percentages to estimate trade diversion and creation, they are instead used as a point of reference.</p><p>ii</p> / <p>Denna kandidatuppsats undersöker huruvida Sveriges handel har påverkats av handelsomfördelning och eller en handelsökning efter medlemskapet i den Europeiska Unionen (EU). Detta gör vi genom att analysera Sveriges handelstrend under 1985-2004.</p><p>Till vår hjälp i vår undersökning av Sveriges handelsutveckling under de senaste 20 åren har vi använt Soloaga och Winters (2000) regressionsmodell som är baserad på gravitations modellen för handel men vi har modifierat den till att passa vårt syfte. Genom denna modifierade modell har vi gjort en poolad paneldata analys där vi delar upp vår tids period i två grupper, en före- och en under EU grupp och vi inkluderade åtta variabler i modellen. Sammanfattningsvis har vi kommit fram till att Sverige har påverkats av en 44 procentig handelsomfördelning då handeln har skiftat från icke medlemsstater till medlemsstater. Sverige har även ökat sin handel med EU länderna med 106 procent vilket pekar på att Sverige även har påverkats av en handelsökning. Dessa siffror måste dock ses som en utgångspunkt och inte exakta siffror för handelsomfördelning och handelsökning då vi ej inkluderat en variabel som mäter valutakurs förändringar i vår regressionsmodell</p>

The thesis concentrates on measuring the benefits and losses of implementing regional trade agreements. In particular, the thesis analyses trade flow changes, foreign direct investment inflow changes, industrial total factor productivity changes and specific commodity trade flow changes in Australia and China. Four empirical studies are undertaken. Firstly, the thesis introduces the gravity model to estimate the effect of regional trade agreements on trade flow changes, focusing on thirty-nine countries and areas from seven regional trade agreements during 1980-2004. The results show that there are trade creation and trade diversion effects for various memberships. The results further show that China experiences an export creation effect for its APEC membership while Australia has an import diversion effect for its CER membership. When trade between Australia and China is considered, Australia's CER membership impedes its trade with China. However, both Australia and China benefit from attending APEC jointly to enlarge their bilateral trade. Secondly, a modified gravity model is undertaken to test the impact of regional trade agreements on foreign direct investment inflows to Australia and China. It uses the same regional trade agreements to that of the trade flow study for the period of 1980 to 2004 for Australia and 1985 to 2004 for China. The results show that CER members tend to strengthen their bilateral foreign direct investment cooperation after the implementation of CER trade and investment liberalization. Thirdly, the impact of regional trade agreements is examined on industrial total factor productivity growth. The findings show that industries with comparative trading advantages in both Australia and China tend to improve their total factor productivity upon liberalizing trade both bilaterally and multilaterally. However, industries with comparative disadvantages need more protection against severe foreign competition. It uses data from 1974-75 to 2004-05 for the Australian market sector analysis, from 1968-69 to 1990-2000 for the Australian manufacturing industry analysis, and from 1987 to 2003 for the Chinese industry analysis. Finally, the thesis investigates the impact of regional trade agreements on bilateral commodity trade between Australia and China from 1979 to 2004. A similar gravity model to that of the trade flow study is used, introducing an additional GDP per capita variable to capture the effect of increasing consumers' income on their consumption of particular goods and products type based on product and production characteristics. Both the one-digit and some detailed four-digit commodity classifications described in the Standard International Trade Classification are considered. The results show that participation in regional trade agreements is an important factor that affects Australia's major commodity trade with China. The major contribution of this thesis is the investigation of issues on trade flows and foreign direct investment specifically in Australia and China, together with the studies of the effect of regional trade agreements on industrial total factor productivity improvement and specific commodity trade changes. Due to the increasing pursuit of bilateral and regional economic cooperation in Australia and China, the results of this thesis are of particular importance to both countries in their foreign trade and economic strategies.