Reyadh Faras

Quantifying the Impact of the Wto on Kuwait Reyadh Faras

The major contribution of this study is to quantify the economic impact of Kuwait's membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) on supply, demand,welfare and terms of trade. A general equilibrium international trade model is used to obtain quantitative results. The model is theoretically static and based on the assumptions of perfect competition and constant returns to scale. However, it was estimated and simulated dynamically. The simulation exercises gave a number of results. First, the agreement on tariffreduction has a very small (positive) effect on Kuwait because tariff rates are already low, making any reductions to have insignificant effects. Second, the antidumping agreement has a larger (negative) effect since it corresponds to higher increase in the price of the importable good. Third, the decline in the world.s price of the importable good as a result of globally implementing the WTO agreements has opposite effects but of the same magnitude to those of the antidumping agreement. Finally, the agreement on government procurement has the least effects since it increases exports only.