Estimating Bilateral Export Potentials of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) in Non-Oil Industries

This paper examines the success of bilateral export potentials between Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) member countries in non-oil industries. Based on the Anderson and Van Win-coop gravity model, an empirical trade equation is derived and estimated using the bilateral trade information of all 10 ECO countries as well as those of their 40 main common trade partners in non-oil industries over 1992-2009. We employed a GMM instrumental variable model (ABB estimator) for the dynamic specification and a FEM estimator for the static version of the model. The results show that the formation of ECO has no significant impact in increasing trade among member countries. The results also show that ECO trade potentials in non-oil industries are not far beyond the actual level. Furthermore, export potentials are asymmetrically distributed among members. Turkey, Iran and Pakistan are the only countries representing positive export potentials towards the group. In particular, Turkish export potentials to Iran are 3.5 times larger than those of Iran to Turkey. That is, free trade among ECO nations may result in regional trade deficit for some members.