Preliminary draft

The growth in intra-regional trade and investment has been one of the dominant features of the world economy in the last years. The statistical indicators which are commonly used in order to measure this phenomenon are inadequate to evaluate its dynamics, as well as to compare different regions. This paper reviews the analytical limitations of the available statistical tools, and proposes some new indicators, experimenting their application to data concerning the four main regional integra-tion areas (ASEAN, EU, MERCOSUR and NAFTA) in the period 1990-2000. In particular, a “trade introversion index ” is proposed, which seems able to surmount all the main shortcomings of the traditional indicators. Comparative assessments of intra-regional trade are strongly affected by the choice of the statistical indicator. All the four regions considered in this paper experienced a moderate upward trend in trade introversion in the nineties. The level of the index for MERCOSUR was much higher than for the other regions. The trade introversion index can be read as an ex-post measure of the trade-diverting effects of re-gional integration. Combining data on trade and GDP, an index of relative trade openness can be obtained, which is related to the internal and external trade-creating effects of regional integration. ASEAN appears the region with the highest degree of relative trade openness, whilst both MERCOSUR and NAFTA are well below the world average