Rules of origin and exports in developing economies: The case of garment products

Relaxing restrictive rules of origin (ROO) in preferential market access can promote exports in developing economies by improving input sourcing flexibility, but actual ROO impacts remain an empirical question. This paper examines the European Union's trade preferences, where origin requirements for knit and woven garment products were relaxed for beneficiaries in the Interim Economic Partnership Agreements (IEPA) from 2008 and for those in the Everything But Arms (EBA) scheme from 2011, respectively. The results show that ROO liberalization had little aggregate impact on knit and woven garment exports in IEPA beneficiaries, but increased the export values of woven garments in EBA beneficiaries by 36.3% during the post-period. Among EBA beneficiaries, duty-free imports of woven garments from Bangladesh and Cambodia into the EU increased sharply after ROO liberalization. These countries increased imported fabric from China, consistent with the theoretical prediction of ROO impacts. Thus, the impact of ROO on exports is heterogeneous across products and countries.