Is mercosur promoting trade? Insights from Argentinean wine exports

Page Header Article Tools Print this article Indexing metadata How to cite item Email this article (Login required) Email the author (Login required) SUBMITTING A MANUSCRIPT FAQs User Username Password Remember me Journal Content Search Search Scope Browse By Issue By Author By Title Other Journals Font Size Make font size smaller Make font size default Make font size larger Language English Español (España) Information For Readers For Authors For Librarians Home About Login Register Search Current Archives Announcements WEBS OF INTEREST Home > Vol 15, No 1 (2017) > Dal Bianco Is Mercosur promoting trade? Insights from Argentinean wine exports Andrea Dal Bianco, Maria J. Estrella-Orrego, Vasco L. Boatto, Alejandro J. Gennari Abstract As a consequence of the rapid and significative decrease in domestic demand, to avoid structural surplus traditional wine producing countries have been forced to export a growing share of their wine production. This article empirically investigates Argentinean trade policy on the wine sector over the last years, in order to understand its effect on export flows. An expanded gravity model was estimated through a Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood estimator, in order to account for heteroskedasticity. The data used refer to Argentinean exports of bottled wine to all main world importers during the period 1997-2010, and account for more than 90% of total trade flows. Our results show that Mercosur membership has promoted Argentinean wine exports to other Latin American countries, but may as a whole have been counter-productive. A more open trade policy could increase Argentinean bottled wine exports by more than 5.8%. In addition, given the rise in wine importation and consumption in countries with high tariff barriers, such as China, the small number of free trade agreements could penalize Argentinean exports even more in the future.