Bilateral free trade agreements in a four-country model with a digital technology perspective

Using a four-country North-South trade model with two identical countries in each region, this paper studies two types of bilateral free trade agreements: symmetric free trade agreements between countries in the same region, and asymmetric free trade agreements between countries from different regions. It first shows that a symmetric free trade agreement is always beneficial to its members and characterizes when it will increase or decrease the welfare of all countries. It then characterizes when an asymmetric free trade agreement is beneficial to its members and when it is beneficial to all countries. Results of this paper provide a digital technology perspective for international trade agreements. In particular, they imply that countries with less advanced digital technologies in general have incentives to catch up to the more advanced countries and that in some instances it is also in the interest of the digitally more advanced countries to help the digitally less advanced countries shrink the technology gap.