Regionalism in Trade: An Overview of the Last Half-Century

The paper starts with a discussion of potential sources of regionalism in trade; and what, on this basis, might have been expected to be the performance of regionalism. In its main part, this is an empirical analysis of the actual change in the degree of regionalism over the last half-century, distinguishing four major groups of countries as “regions”. Judging by two complementary indices, it appears that the share of regional trading in world trade has increased substantially, so that much of the remarkable expansion of global trade has taken place via the channel of trade within specific regions.