چکیده:
During recent years, regional economic integration has played a crucial role in
the conduction of trade policies. Economic integration relies upon the concept
of joint commercial policies within regions by which countries enable to promote
their trade potentials. Basically, a new type of cooperation throughout new
preferential trade agreements has emerged by economic blocks such as MERCOSUR,
NAFTA, ASEAN and others. Now, there is an appropriate avenue for the nations of
Euro-Mediterranean to deepen their economic relations and benefit from regional
integration effects.
The present paper makes attempt to indicate the impact of possible economic
integration on the international trade flows of the Euro-Mediterranean
countries. Accordingly, it uses a trade gravity model in order to explore main
determinants that would significantly affect the trade flows of mentioned
countries. To the end, an application of spatial econometric methods can assist
us in obtaining relevant estimation results.
The contiguity effect must be considered because of spatial dependence of the
Euro-Mediterranean countries. These countries have some common borders and they
therefore have impacts on each other and their relations can be influenced by
neighborhood. Thus estimating the model through traditional econometrics obtains
biased results and the model must be solved by spatial techniques. The paper
thus tries to answer the question of to what extent the contiguity factor can
influence the intra-trade flows of the Euro-Mediterranean countries.
خلاصه ماشینی:
"The present paper makes attempt to indicate the impact of possible economic integration on the international trade flows of the Euro-Mediterranean countries.
Keywords: Regional Integration, International Trade Flows, Gravity Model, the Euro-Mediterranean Countries, Contiguity And Spatial Effects.
The contiguity is thus a crucial factor that should be considered to identify the determinants that would increase trade flows between the European and the Mediterranean countries.
V- The Model In this paper, we use a gravity model to estimate the integration between the EU and the Mediterranean countries as well as spatial effects on volume of trade flows.
The assumptions of the model are that trade flows between two countries are related positively to their GDPs and inversely to their geographical distance.
Accordingly, a type of the generalized trade gravity model is specified as follows: LnXij = α + β1 LnGDPi +β2 LnGDPj + β3 Dij +β4 Dist +β5 SXij (2) Where, Ln denotes variables in natural Logs.
The estimated value indicates that a proportion of trade flows of each considered country is due to contiguous effect and this confirms the idea of regional spillovers.
IX- Conclusions To examine the effect of integration and spatial effects on EU-Med trade flows, this paper has investigated the conduction of integrating the block’s members in economic activities, based upon an application of the trade gravity model.
Farahmand (2002), “The Survey of Economic Convergence and Spillover Effects between the EU and the Mediterranean Countries: A Spatial Econometric Perspective”, a paper that has been presented in “7th Euro- Mediterranean Symposium”."