Exploring the trade facilitation role of Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs): A comparison of BRICS and the Next Eleven economies

The present study assesses the trade facilitating role of regional agreements (RTAs) BRICS and Next Eleven (N-11) economies using annual bilateral over period 2000–2019. For empirical estimation, we applied structural gravity with Poisson pseudo maximum likelihood estimator. findings show higher effect RTAs for imports compared to exports both N-11 countries. While countries mostly facilitate metals, chemical products, plastic rubber; RTAs’ is more pronounced animal cereals, fruits, vegetable, in addition labor intensive industries such as textile, footwear, leather economies. Furthermore, that adjustment exporting process response entry an FTA affected by governance quality prevailing source country. In this context, Bangladesh, Egypt, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan particularly need improve spur their export performance.