Evaluating the impact of preferential trade agreement on fishery imports: An application of difference‐in‐differences with matching method

Abstract

The purpose of thisstudy is to investigate the average treatment effect of the preferential tariff scheme at the HS 6-digit level on the imports of fishery products between each OECD country and the world. The estimated results by employing a difference-in-differences with matching method show statistically positive average treatment effects for imports of frozen yellowfin tuna (HS030342) and fresh long-finned tuna (HS030231) in many countries. However, there are also several negative average treatment effects on imports, implying that several OECD countries do not utilize preferential tariff schemes with exporter countries with sufficient productivity. This study fills the gap in the literature by providing more rigorous insights in the discussion regarding the trade creation/diversion effect of preferential trade agreements (PTAs).