Preferential Trade Agreements and Trade Liberalization Efforts in the OIC Member States
With Special Emphasis on the TPS-OIC
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12. Workers less likely to be in same jobs / professions over their lifetime, importance of
retraining, learning to (re)learn continuing education. Protect workers not jobs.
13. The gains may be stronger if countries cooperate (gains from regulatory cooperation /
harmonisation; recognition of qualifications; less constraining rules of origin). Hence Regional
agreement, plurilateral and multilateral agreements might help to lock-in policies that might
foster value chain activity. The more such agreements can go beyond goods trade liberalisation
the more likely it is that they will address some of the constraints to GVC participation. Hence
include areas such as: services, investment, competition, intellectual property, temporary
movement of workers. However it is important to be careful not to divert countries into
inefficient regional networks with e.g. constraining rules of origin
2.7. EMPIRICS OF TRADE LIBERALISATION
Introduction
Given the deep economic and policy implications of free trade agreements, the study of their
effects has received significant attention. A frequent demand from policy makers to
researchers and analysts is to provide an analysis of the effects of these trade agreements on
the participating economies. This has led to the development of different methods and
techniques for the evaluation of these effects.
A general distinction that can be made between these methods is related to the temporal
position of the researcher and the analysis with respect to the event to be evaluated. In this
sense, it is possible to evaluate trade agreements (and policies in general) before and after the
event. In the first case, the ex-ante analysis seeks to identify the future likely effects that an
agreement may have with regard to different variables of interests. A general feature of this
type of analysis is the inherent uncertainty in this type of exercise. Not only is not clear what
are the other factors that could affect the variables of interest; it is frequently also the case that
there is uncertainty about the very experiment or change in policy that is being evaluated. For
example, a typical ex ante exercise would be to predict the change in trade flow arising from
tariff liberalisation. In practice few agreements liberalise all tariffs and so the researcher is
faced with a choice as to which tariffs to liberalise. In practice what is frequently assumed is
that all tariffs are liberalised to provide an "outer bound" of the likely effects. The ex-ante
analysis provides a prediction which evaluates the prospective policy exercise assuming that
this will be the only event to occur. Simulation and descriptive statistical analysis are among
the main tools.
Alternatively, it is possible to evaluate the effects of an agreement once it has been signed and
implemented by looking into the ’actual’ effects that it had on the variables of interest.
Therefore, the ex-post analysis removes the uncertainty with respect to the experiment of