Spatial and Temporal Factors Affecting Agricultural Trade in the European Union (EU) and Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO)

Export is an important factor in economic development and the creation of regional agreements is one of the ways to facilitate trade and exports; but measuring the success rate of these agreements is one of the challenges of this field. In this study, we compared the factors affecting agricultural exports and imports in the ECO and European Union countries. The purpose of this study was to assess the potential effects of countries’ trade policies on the other countries that are in the same trade zone. To achieve this objective, we used spatial econometric techniques on data regarding the years between 1992 and 2013. The results showed that spatial effects were present in both trade zones. The comparison of coefficients of these variables in the import and export functions, led to the introduction of a new index which can be used as a criterion to evaluate the level of agricultural development in different trade zones.