The world economy has become more open and integrated in recent years. Countries are more engaged in international trade and the importance of tradables relative to non-tradables in national output is rising everywhere. Capital flows more freely among countries and workers cross borders more...

The authors review current developments in international trade and its prospects for the future arguing that despite the recent slowdown, trade remains an important driver of economic growth and development. Scepticism towards further trade opening needs to be addressed, notably via appropriate...

Purpose − This study explains a puzzle: most countries realize the mutual benefit of tariff cutting, but tariffs never become zero. Approach − The method is decision-theoretic, and proves the results by example. Findings − The Johnson tariff-ridden equilibrium may be unique, but not the...

Until the beginning of this century, the GATT/WTO system worked. Economic research provided a compelling explanation. It showed that if governments maximize the well-being of their own countries broadly defined, GATT/WTO principles would facilitate mutually beneficial cooperation over their...

In this paper, I study the impact of the Most Favored Nation (MFN) principle of the GATT/WTO on the characterization of Pareto-improving bilateral trade agreements. The paper offers four main predictions. First, bilateral trade agreements improve the welfare of negotiating countries and leave...

This paper shows how gains from trade are conditioned by love of variety, defined as the extent to which an additional product variety generates benefits in either final or intermediate consumption. We develop a multi-country, multi-sector gravity trade model where love of variety is...

Artificial photosynthesis (AP) is an area of well-advanced research involving large international groups at the cutting edge of synthetic biology and nanotechnology. In simple terms it offers to produce a cheap source of hydrogen for fuel through using sunlight to split water, as well as making...