The effects of the GSTP on trade flow: Mission accomplished?

This paper investigates whether the Global System of Trade Preferences among developing countries (GSTP) achieves its intent to increase the trade of capital goods between member countries. For this purpose, trade data disaggregated by the degree of commodity differentiation and various GSTP regional dummies are employed in a gravity equation. Estimation results say that the value of trade between GSTP member countries has increased significantly since the formation of the GSTP in 1989, and the trade of differentiated commodities has increased remarkably compared with other commodities. Therefore, it can be asserted that the mission of the GSTP has been accomplished successfully.