Economic integration agreements and the margins of international trade

One of the main policy sources of trade-cost changes is the formation of an economic integration agreement (ElA), which potentially affects an importing country's welfare. This paper: (i) provides the first evidence using gravity equations of both intensive and extensive (goods) margins being affected by ElAs employing a panel data set with a large number of country pairs, product categories, and ElAs from 1962 to 2000; (ii) provides the first evidence of the differential (partial) effects of various types of ElAs on these intensive and extensive margins of trade; and (iii) finds a novel differential timing of the two margins' (partial) effects with intensive-margin effects occurring sooner than extensive-margin effects, consistent with recent theoretical predictions. The results are robust to correcting for potential sample-selection, firm-heterogeneity, and reverse causality biases. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.