Trade asymmetries in the Mediterranean basin

© 2017 Elsevier B.V. The paper examines the evolution of European Union\u27s trade asymmetries across the Mediterranean basin, by highlighting the impact of the 1995 Barcelona convention\u27s free trade agreements. Asymmetry is gauged by measuring the speed of trade openness convergence paths between the Mediterranean North and South. The EU\u27s Southern Mediterranean partners’ reaction to their free trade agreements is examined with a series of convergence tests, accounting for endogeneity and instrumenting with spatial geographic matrices and geopolitical dummy variables. It is revealed that following the European Union\u27s 1995 free trade initiatives the trade asymmetry between Middle Eastern and North African countries and their Northern counterparts becomes more asymmetric, ratifying Prebisch-Singer\u27s empirical hypothesis