Bridging RTAs in the Americas >>
FIGURE 2.10 Percentage of Similarity in Product-Specific RoO, Selected RoO Families 100
80
60
40
20
0
MERCOSUR
Mexico
US
NAFTA members
TransPacific
Americas
Chile
Global
Source: IDB calculations based on the Regimenes de Origen de las Americas Database.
A product-by-product examination is required to assess the extent of compatibilities in RoO across regimes for any given product. Figure 2.10 does this by mapping out the frequency of the most commonly occurring RoO across RTAs within some of the main RoO families in the Americas: a U.S. family (of 13 agreements) and Mexican (9) and Chilean (8) families; families of agreements signed by NAFTA members (25) and MERCOSUR (18), respectively; and trans-Pacific agreements (8); as well as an Americas-wide sample (41) and a global sample (72) (Appendix 2.1 specifies the agreements included in each family).17 The data are averages of calculations of RoO type, as proxied by Harris’s (2007) RoO restrictiveness index, at the subheading level. The height of the bar for a particular family shows the average percentage of agreements within the family that have similar RoO. Agreements within a family may have 17 The Asia-Americas and global samples are included in light of the fact that regional integration in the Americas is increasingly of the transcontinental kind; as such, the makeup of agreements in other regions, as well as of those that countries of the Americas have with other regions, is of growing relevance for the regional economies—as well as for any efforts at convergence both within and beyond the Americas. Furthermore, comparing the extent of RTA convergence in the Americas vis-à-vis that in other regions allows for better gauging of the prospects of convergence in the Americas.
111