Much potential for trade liberalization exists in industries and markets with trade barriers that are prohibitive for all or many firms. In standard political economic theories of trade policy, observed prohibitive barriers must be globally optimal according to static government preferences,...

This paper considers trade agreements in a sufficiently general framework to encompass both imperfectly competitive market structures and income effects in government objectives. We show that governments choose globally efficient policies if they act as if they do not value the impact of their...

The paper tackles the question of how far should investment tribunals go in reviewing the reasonableness of host State conduct. Based on an evolutionary interpretation of the preamble of international investment treaties and focusing on the principle of integration as the key element of the...