Is MERCOSUR’s External Agenda Pro-Poor?: An assessment of the European Union-MERCOSUR free-trade agreement on poverty in Uruguay applying MIRAGE

dc.creatorEstrades, Carmen
dc.date2012
dc.date2024-10-01T13:59:03Z
dc.date2024-10-01T13:59:03Z
dc.date.accessioned2026-06-27T15:21:03Z
dc.descriptionIn 2010, after several years of being stalled, negotiations between MERCOSUR (the Common Market of the Southern Cone) and the European Union (EU) to build a free-trade agreement (FTA) were resumed. This FTA is expected to have an important impact on MERCOSUR economies, especially if both blocs reach an agreement regarding the agricultural sector. This paper analyzes the impact of an FTA between MERCOSUR and EU, with a special focus on distributional impacts on Uruguay. For this we apply an improved version of MIRAGE (Modeling International Relationships in Applied General Equilibrium) with household heterogeneity. The representative agent in the standard version of the MIRAGE model is decomposed into a private and a public agent for all regions, and into a high number of households for Uruguay. Results show that a trade agreement between MERCOSUR and EU would have a significant impact on trade flows between both blocs. MERCOSUR economies would increase agriculture exports to EU and industrial imports from EU. Welfare increases in all countries participating in the agreement but is more pronounced for the two small countries of MERCOSUR: Paraguay and Uruguay. In Uruguay, welfare increases for different categories of households, but the richest households benefit the most. In spite of this, inequality decreases as a consequence of the agreement, and poverty rates decrease throughout the country.
dc.formatapplication/pdf
dc.identifierhttps://hdl.handle.net/10568/154030
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/123456789/101840
dc.languageen
dc.publisherInternational Food Policy Research Institute
dc.rightsOpen Access
dc.sourceEstrades, Carmen. 2012. Is MERCOSUR’s External Agenda Pro-Poor? An assessment of the European Union-MERCOSUR free-trade agreement on poverty in Uruguay applying MIRAGE. IFPRI Discussion Paper 1219. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). https://hdl.handle.net/10568/154030
dc.subjectcomputable general equilibrium models
dc.subjecttrade agreements
dc.subjectpoverty
dc.subjectmercosur
dc.subjecttrade liberalization
dc.subjectmodels
dc.subjecthouseholds
dc.subjectinequality
dc.titleIs MERCOSUR’s External Agenda Pro-Poor?: An assessment of the European Union-MERCOSUR free-trade agreement on poverty in Uruguay applying MIRAGE
dc.typeWorking Paper

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