Trade liberalization indexes and the evaluation of preferential trade agreements: A note on Ruiz Estrada

The author critically evaluates the proposal for a new analytical model aimed at evaluating ex ante the conditions to form free trade areas among groups of countries (the trade liberalization evaluation-TLE-methodology, see Ruiz Estrada, 2004) and points to a number of serious weaknesses. These are related to the regional dimension in the methodology, the economic sense and coherence of it, and to the mathematical and technical soundness of the proposal.