Importer market power and preferential trade agreements: Empirical evidence

This paper provides direct empirical evidence that preferential trade agreements (PTAs) are consistent with the terms‐of‐trade theory. Using PTAs that occur between 2001 and 2015, we first show a PTA is associated with being more likely if countries have greater importer market power over one another. Second, using recently available tariff data for 39 bilateral PTAs, we show high levels of importer market power lead to tariff cuts that are larger in magnitude when PTAs enter into force. These results provide a rationale for why PTAs are permitted by the World Trade Organization.