The Impact of Trade Agreements on Consumer Welfare—Evidence from the EU Common External Trade Policy

Abstract

This paper estimates the consumer welfare impact of the new generation of trade agreements implemented by the European Union between 1993 and 2013. We decompose the overall eect into contributions of changes in prices, quality and variety. Estimating trade elasticities for narrow product categories of EU imports, we infer quality from data on imported values and volumes. For the EU as a whole, we nd that trade agreements increased quality by 7% on average but did not aect prices or variety. This translates into a cumulative reduction in the consumer price index of 0.24% over our sample period. We also nd a high degree of impact heterogeneity across EU countries, trading partners and the type of trade agreement, with high-income EU countries seeing much stronger quality increases and larger overall consumer benets.

Technology-Induced Trade Shocks? Evidence from Broadband Expansion in France

“…Given our calibration, we find that the import channel led to 0.48 % increase in consumer welfare through its effect on the price index. As a point of comparison, Berlingieri et al (2018) estimate in a recent paper that trade agreements implemented by the EU led to an overall decline of 0.24% in the consumer price index over a 20 year period (1993-2013). 29 Therefore, while the import channel of broadband internet access might seem moderate, it appears large compared to other policy experiments and accounts for about 25% of the consumer gains from broadband internet.…”

Job characteristics, job transitions and services trade

“…Nonetheless, job loss risk in the Distribution sector is almost 50% higher than it is for ICT workers. 12 11 Low rates of job losses in Finance during the time of the global financial crisis may seem surprising at first view. One possible explanation is the relatively higher number of employees in classical brick-and-mortar banks which got through the crisis fairly well.…”

“…One possible explanation is the relatively higher number of employees in classical brick-and-mortar banks which got through the crisis fairly well. 12 The difference in labour market dynamics between sectors such as Distribution and ICT might also be due to differences in the market concentration in these sectors. In addition to structural differences across sectors, Figure 6 shows trends over time.…”

Technology-induced trade shocks? Evidence from broadband expansion in France

“…Given our calibration, we find that the import channel led to 0.48 % increase in consumer welfare through its effect on the price index. As a point of comparison, Berlingieri et al (2018) estimate in a recent paper that trade agreements implemented by the EU led to an overall decline of 0.24% in the consumer price index over a 20 year period . 29 Therefore, while the import channel of broadband internet access might seem moderate, it appears large compared to other policy experiments and accounts for about 25% of the consumer gains from broadband internet.…”