This paper examines the welfare effects of the formation of a free-trade area (a set of countries that abolish tariffs among member countries but let individual member countries to set external tariffs). If a representative consumer has love-of-variety preferences, the welfare function exhibits...

This paper argues that the sign of external effects of coalition formation provides a useful organizing principle in examining economic coalitions. In many interesting economic games, coalition formation creates either negativee externalities or positive externalities for nonmembers. Examples of...