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49
compared to an adversary. Alternatively, adoption of an RTA may reflect the desire
to keep up with an adversary whose economic efficiency represents a security threat.
To be sure, not all regional schemes involve states engaged in substantial trade, but it
is the case that adversaries have remained reticent to form RTAs.
Regional Integration and State Formation
Prior to the influence of neo-functionalists in Europe, trade integration under
the Prussian Zollverein contributed to the consolidation of Germany-speaking people
and formation of the German state. It may be interesting to recall that Austria was
excluded from the Zollverein and remains a separate German-speaking state today.
Similarly, in the earliest years of the fledgling US state, Alexander Hamilton
recognized the importance of promoting trade between northern and southern states
as a nationalistic objective to strengthen the federation through commercial
interdependence. Despite these examples of trade integration as a source of state
formation, an interesting contribution to the international political economy literature
challenges the potential for political integration desired by neo-functionalists.
Alberto Alesina, Enrico Spolaore, and Romain Wacziarg (1997) examine the
relationship between economic integration and political disintegration. These
authors model the possibility that formal economic integration among smaller,
perhaps ethnically or culturally distinct, states overcomes the need for large states
providing sufficiently large markets affording economies of scale. It is interesting to
consider the survival and persistence of European microstates in the context of this
Object Description
| Title | Riding the wave: an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the popularity of RTA notifications to the GATT/WTO |
| Author | McClough, David Andrew |
| Author email | mcclough@usc.edu; dmcclou@bgsu.edu |
| Degree | Doctor of Philosophy |
| Document type | Dissertation |
| Degree program | Political Economy & Public Policy |
| School | College of Letters, Arts and Sciences |
| Date defended/completed | 2008-08-07 |
| Date submitted | 2008 |
| Restricted until | Unrestricted |
| Date published | 2008-10-18 |
| Advisor (committee chair) | Katada, Saori N. |
| Advisor (committee member) |
Nugent, Jeffrey B. Cartier, Carolyn |
| Abstract | The proliferation of Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) notified to the GATT/WTO since the early 1980s deviates from the long-term trend and reflects participation of nearly every member of the United Nations. This dissertation seeks to explain the current wave of RTA notifications by supplementing the economic model of supply and demand with diffusion theory. Application of the supply and demand model is useful in distinguishing between changes in demand and changes insupply of RTAs. This distinction is seldom emphasized in the current literature examining RTAs. Recent applications of diffusion theory in the discipline of international relations offer a unique opportunity to include a dynamic force in the static analysis of the supply and demand model. Empirical analysis assesses the fit of the RTA diffusion pattern by comparing the RTA diffusion pattern to a cumulative standard normal distribution. The analysis indicates that the diffusion pattern of RTAs resembles the diffusion of an innovation through a social system.; The implication of this finding is that the adoption of an RTA as trade policy is not made independently of the decision by other states. Indeed, the analysis suggests interdependency between states. Further empirical analysis explores economic and political variables that may explain the decision to adopt the RTA as trade policy. The empirical analysis is unique in that survival analysis is utilized to assess the variation in duration to adopt an initial RTA since the early 1980s. A central discovery is that regional designation explains the variation in duration to adopt an initial RTA. Multiple regression analysis confirms the results generated using survival analysis and support the assertion that the proliferation of RTAs likely reflects changes in both the demand for RTAs and the supply of RTAs. This dissertation concludes by considering implications for the WTO resulting from the increase in RTA notifications. |
| Keyword | trade agreements |
| Coverage date | after 1980 |
| Language | English |
| Part of collection | University of Southern California dissertations and theses |
| Publisher (of the original version) | University of Southern California |
| Place of publication (of the original version) | Los Angeles, California |
| Publisher (of the digital version) | University of Southern California. Libraries |
| Provenance | Electronically uploaded by the author |
| Type | texts |
| Legacy record ID | usctheses-m1675 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Rights | McClough, David Andrew |
| Repository name | Libraries, University of Southern California |
| Repository address | Los Angeles, California |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Filename | etd-McClough-2338 |
| Archival file | uscthesesreloadpub_Volume32/etd-McClough-2338.pdf |
Description
| Title | Page 58 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Full text | 49 compared to an adversary. Alternatively, adoption of an RTA may reflect the desire to keep up with an adversary whose economic efficiency represents a security threat. To be sure, not all regional schemes involve states engaged in substantial trade, but it is the case that adversaries have remained reticent to form RTAs. Regional Integration and State Formation Prior to the influence of neo-functionalists in Europe, trade integration under the Prussian Zollverein contributed to the consolidation of Germany-speaking people and formation of the German state. It may be interesting to recall that Austria was excluded from the Zollverein and remains a separate German-speaking state today. Similarly, in the earliest years of the fledgling US state, Alexander Hamilton recognized the importance of promoting trade between northern and southern states as a nationalistic objective to strengthen the federation through commercial interdependence. Despite these examples of trade integration as a source of state formation, an interesting contribution to the international political economy literature challenges the potential for political integration desired by neo-functionalists. Alberto Alesina, Enrico Spolaore, and Romain Wacziarg (1997) examine the relationship between economic integration and political disintegration. These authors model the possibility that formal economic integration among smaller, perhaps ethnically or culturally distinct, states overcomes the need for large states providing sufficiently large markets affording economies of scale. It is interesting to consider the survival and persistence of European microstates in the context of this |
