EU-Mercosur Free Trade Agreement: Exploring the Impact on E-Commerce

Abstract

Abstract Recent technological changes have altered the way in which interactions take place between economic agents. One of the main advances is the possibility to broadly disseminate information at very low cost. E-commerce is a significant part of this change, becoming increasingly important within the EU. In this paper we analyze the impact of the recent trade agreement reached between EU and Mercosur countries on e-commerce flows. We take advantage of the political agreement announced on June 28, 2019 as a source for identification. We use data from SimilarWeb, a digital market intelligence company that provides information on worldwide Internet traffic. Our results show that the announcement of the Agreement has had a positive impact on Internet traffic between EU and Mercosur countries. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first empirical exercise to analyze the impact of this and other Agreements on e-commerce.