An Export Portfolio Assessment of Regional Free Trade Agreements: A Mercosur and Pacific Alliance Perspective

We use the portfolio theory to assess the export performance of two important regional free trade agreements (RFTAs), namely, Mercosur and the Pacific Alliance, and their constituent countries. The results indicate that the export portfolio of the Pacific Alliance dominates that of Mercosur from a risk-return perspective. When we compare these two regional FTAs’ portfolios to an Asian export portfolio, the performance of the export portfolios of the Latin American RFTAs is dominated by that of the Asian export portfolio. In a larger context, the continual attention paid to these Latin American RFTAs is a reflection of the slow and uneven development of global trade negotiation.