Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/331591 
Year of Publication: 
2025
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 12125
Publisher: 
Munich Society for the Promotion of Economic Research - CESifo GmbH, Munich
Abstract: 
Do countries gain more by liberalizing trade together than alone? To answer this question, we study the 2015 Phase II expansion of the Information Technology Agreement (ITA), which eliminated tariffs on products covering over 12% of world trade. Market access rose by 4–6%. Nearly half of this effect reflects coordination spillovers — the extra gains from simultaneous liberalization — outweighing the roles of direct tariff cuts and reduced policy uncertainty. Exploiting quasi-experimental variation in the number of countries liberalizing each product, we show spillovers are positive once coalitions span about two-thirds of world imports — below the commonly assumed 80% critical-mass benchmark for plurilaterals. These findings show that joint liberalization yields benefits beyond the sum of individual actions — evidence of the force of many
Subjects: 
plurilateral agreements
MFN liberalization
trade policy uncertainty
coordination spillovers
critical mass
onformation technology agreement
JEL: 
F13
F14
F15
F53
Document Type: 
Working Paper
Appears in Collections:

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.