Duration of the Membership in the World Trade Organization and Aid for Trade Flows

In examining the effect of membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) on the amounts of Aid for Trade (AfT) that accrue to developing countries, Lee et al. (2015) (The World Economy, 38, 2015 and 1462) have found that developing country members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) received higher AfT flows than non-WTO developing members. The present paper deepens the analysis by Lee et al. (2015) by investigating the effect of the duration of WTO membership on the amounts of AfT flows that accrue to recipient countries. The duration of membership in the WTO captures both the membership in the WTO and the time spent by a country in the organization. The main argument in this analysis is that the duration of WTO membership matters more than the mere WTO membership for the degree of liberalization in AfT recipient countries’ trade regimes and their participation in international trade, the latter being a critical determinant of the AfT flows supplied by donors. This analysis has relied on a panel dataset of 136 countries over the period from 2002 to 2019, and the two-step generalized method of moments estimator. It has established that countries receive higher AfT flows as their membership duration increases, and the amounts of these resource inflows increase as recipient countries further liberalize their trade regime and further participate in international trade. Additionally, the effect of the duration of WTO membership on total AfT flows depends on donor-countries’ commercial self-interest in recipient countries, including the latter’s economic growth performance and endowment in natural resources.