Katerina Gradeva’s research while affiliated with Goethe University Frankfurt and other places

This study examines the effect of the Everything But Arms (EBA) trade preferences regime on exports from African, Caribbean and Pacific countries (ACP) to the European Union (EU). With this aim, an augmented gravity model is estimated for exports from the 79 ACP countries to the EU-15 for the time period 1995 to 2005 using panel data techniques. The model estimates are used to quantify the effect of the EBA preferences on the ACP LDCs' export performance and to compare it with the impact of official development assistance. In addition to their separate effects, the combined impact of EBA and aid flows is examined. The main results do not confirm a positive effect of the EBA regime on exports. Otherwise, the combined effect of EBA and aid on exports is positive, supporting an EU development strategy that includes both sorts of assistance, aid and trade preferences.

The idea that some features of the multilateral trading system create incen-tives for countries to join preferential trade agreements (PTAs) is among the first and most influential explanations for the wave of regionalism in the last decades. Until recently, only a few empirical studies have explored this hypothesis and their results have been accepted by many researchers and policy-makers to be a fact. In this study we revisit the question of whether multilateral events are important determinants of regionalism. We use an extended dataset and implement several empirical specifica-tions in the analysis. Unlike previous work, our results provide little support for the relevance of variables such as the number of GATT/WTO members, ongoing trade negotiation rounds, and trade disputes as predictors of PTA formation.

This study examines the effect of the Everything But Arms (EBA) trade preferences regime on exports from African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Least Developed Countries (LDCs) to the European Union (EU). With this aim, an augmented gravity model is estimated for exports from the 79 ACP countries to the EU-15 for the time period 1995 to 2005 using panel data techniques. The model estimates are used to quantify the effect of the EBA preferences on the ACP LDCs� export performance and to compare it with the impact of official development assistance. In addition to their separate effects, the combined impact of EBA and aid flows is estimated. The main results show a negative effect of the EBA regime on exports. Otherwise, the combined effect of the EBA and aid on exports is positive, supporting an EU development strategy that includes both sorts of assistance, aid and trade preferences. --

This study focuses primarily on trade preferences offered by the European Union (EU) and in particular on the Everything But Arms (EBA) trade preferences regime, which is targeted exclusively on least developed countries (LDCs). Using the gravity model, an estimation of the influence of the EBA preferences on exports from the ACP LDCs to the EU-15 is presented. The model is applied to the time period 1995 to 2005 for the ACP countries’ exports to the EU-15 and estimated with the help of different econometric techniques. The core questions of the investigation are two: First, to examine the influence of the EBA preferences on the ACP LDCs’ export performance and second to compare the impact of the EBA scheme with the one of official development assistance. In addition to their separate effects the combined impact of EBA and aid flows is also analysed. The main results show a very poor performance of the EBA regime. However, the combined effect of the EBA and aid on exports is positive, indicating that the development strategy of the developed countries, in this case of the EU, needs to include both sorts of assistance, aid and trade preferences.