THE GROWTH OF REGIONAL ECONOMIC INTEGRATION AGREEMENTS AND THE MIDDLE EAST

One of the most notable events of the world economy over the past twenty years has been the phenomenal growth in the number of international economic integration agreements, such as free trade agreements. This paper discusses the roles of “competitive liberalization” by nations’ governments and possible “domino effects” in the process of regionalism. Country pairs that tend to form free trade agreements tend to be closer to each other, more remote from the rest of the world, and larger and more similar in economic size. We examine the role of these economic factors for predicting the likelihoods of bilateral free trade agreements between Israel with Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia.