LS Penrose’s limit theorem (PLT) – which is implicit in Penrose [5, p. 72] and for which he gave no rigorous proof – says that, in simple weighted voting games, if the number of voters increases indefinitely while existing voters retain their weights and the relative quota is pegged, then...

This paper attempts to develop a formal economic framework to analyze the influences of domestic political considerations by democratic governments in shaping the WTO enforcement outcomes in the wake of a violation ruling against the defendant. Since a different mix of import and export sectors...

This paper proposes a general empirical framework to estimate the protection-for-sale model, where the protection regime shifts according to a sector's market structure (perfectly or monop-olistically competitive). We base the protection structure on Grossman and Helpman (1994) for the subset of...

This paper attempts to study the usage of the GATT/WTO dispute settlement mechanism and to explain its patterns across different regimes and decades, using a unified theoretical model. This study first explores the role of the degree of legal controversy over a panel ruling in determining...

Previous theoretical contributions on endogenous tariff formation have focused on trade mod-els with homogeneous goods and constant returns to scale. This paper investigates the political equilibrium of trade policy when economic structure is instead characterized by differentiated products and...

This paper reexamines the GATT/WTO membership effect on bilateral trade flows, using nonparametric methods including pair-matching, permutation tests, and a Rosenbaum (2002) sensitivity analysis. Together, these methods provide an estimation framework that is robust to misspecification biases,...

This paper presents a theory on the endogenous choice of a country's education policy and the two-way causal relationship between trade and education systems. The setting of a country's education system determines its talent distribution and comparative advantage in trade; the possibility of trade...

We study the impact of country image on international trade flows. We find that a one percentage point increase in the positive response ratio – the proportion of people in the importing country who view the exporting country positively – is associated with at least a one percent increase in...

This paper proposes a general empirical framework to estimate the protection-for-sale model, where the protection regime shifts according to a sector's market structure (perfectly or monopolistically competitive). We base the protection structure on Grossman and Helpman (1994) for the subset of...