To help predict whether the proliferation of free trade agreements (FTAs) continues until global free trade is effectively attained, this paper investigates dynamic paths of FTAs, generated by numerical simulations of a model of an FTA network formation game with many countries. The...

International cooperation in trade policies under the auspices of the WTO makes countries "feel" more obliged to uphold agreements. The paper emphasizes the role of the WTO to give moral support: countries incur "psychological costs" when they renege on the agreements that are formally signed...

This paper derives Abreu's stick-and-carrot strategy optimal penal codes (1986) in a partial equilibrium model that has been widely used to examine trade liberalization. Unless the asymmetry between countries is significant, the optimal penal codes take a simple form. It is also shown that the...

We examine the relationship between tariffs and North-South technology transfer in an oligopoly model when technology is embodied in a key component that only North firms can produce. They may have an incentive to transfer their technologies to South firms even if the South's licensing market is...

To analyze the effects of simultaneous tariff reductions by multiple importing countries on prices, we construct a simple three-country model where a good is produced by a monopolist with nonconstant marginal cost and imported by two countries. We compare two representative tariff-reduction...

Using a simple Cournot-oligopoly model, the paper examines the effects of voluntary export restraints (VERs) on profits, market shares, consumers' surplus, and domestic welfare when the domestic market is open to foreign direct investment (FDI) or exports from a third country. A VER may induce...

The paper examines how a movement from segmented markets to integrated markets affects the volume of trade, consumer prices, profits and welfare in a monopoly model. The monopolist can initially discriminate consumer prices among markets with trade costs but has to take arbitrage into account as...