Regional Trading Arrangements for Chile: do the Results Differ with a Dynamic Model?

Starting from our earlier multi-region trade model, we develop two new 24 sector small open economy (SOE) computable general equilibrium models (CGE) of Chile. One is comparative static and the other is dynamic. We evaluate the impact of Chile forming free trade agreements with either NAFTA or MERCOSUR. Our principal result is that the dynamic SOE model does not produce welfare estimates significantly different from the comparative static SOE model. Our second result is that, although the difference is small, it is possible for a fully dynamic model to produce welfare estimates for a preferential trade area that are welfare inferior than those from a comparative static model.