From the Editor

Dear Readers, Welcome to the second issue of The International Trade Journal (ITJ)’s thirty-seventh volume. The articles in this issue focus on regional integration and regional trade agreements. The first three articles look at different aspects of regional trade agreements, while the final two articles look at broader issues related to regional integration. The first article, by Yash Parakh and Anwesha Aditya, looks at the economic, political, and cultural factors that affect whether countries form regional trade agreements (RTAs) with each other. In addition to economic factors such as market size and distance, they find that political and cultural factors are also important. On the political side, they find liberal democracies and countries that have a military alliance are more likely to enter into an RTA. Countries that have a common language are also more likely to enter an agreement. In contrast, colonial heritage negatively impacts how likely countries are to enter an RTA. The second article, by Zouheir El-Sahli, looks at the effect of the Greater Arab Free Trade Agreement (GAFTA) on trade and economic welfare in the Middle East and North Africa. Using a gravity model, the author estimates that the agreement increased trade between countries in the region by about 40%. Although the relative increase was large relative to pre-GAFTA trade, this was from a low base. As a result, intra-GAFTA trade accounted for less than 10% of the countries’ total trade almost 20 years after GAFTA came into effect. By comparison, intra-EU and intra-NAFTA trade accounted for about 45 and 25% of total trade for countries in these regions. Because of this, the agreement had only a very modest impact on wages or total trade for countries in the GAFTA region. The authors argue that this might be because GAFTA is a relatively shallow trade agreement. The third article, by Francisco Benita, looks at how regional trade agreements performed during and following the 2007 to 2009 financial crisis. The article looks at trade between member countries of five regional groupings: the Southern Common Market (Mercosur), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Arab Maghreb Union, and the Southern African Customs Union (SACU). It also looks at trade between members of these countries and nonmember