This paper shows that electoral incentives affect the occurrence of trade disputes. Focusing on WTO disputes filed by the United States during the 1995-2012 period, we show that U.S. presidents are more likely to initiate a dispute in the year preceding their re-election date. Moreover, disputes...

In trade agreements, governments can design remedies to ensure compliance (property rule) or to compensate victims (liability rule). This paper describes an economic framework to explain the pattern of remedies over non-tariff restrictions — particularly domestic subsidies and nonviolation...

The aim of this paper is to explore the interactions between international economic law and civil society. The starting point is to analyse the role of international economic law in facilitating the “competition of systems” (principally by reducing barriers to international trade and...