The creation or the expansion of a Preferential Trade Arrangement (PTA), in general, hurts the non-member countries because of trade diversion. This could increase the pressure for protection in the non-member countries and, ultimately, worsen the member countries' market access in those...

This article discusses whether the current proliferation of preferential trade agreements - the so-called competitive liberalization - encourages evolution toward multilateral free trade. It argues that countries pursuing preferential trade initiatives are in pursuit of the economic rents...

The global economic effects of eliminating certain significant categories of non-tariff measures (NTMs) are estimated in a CGE context. As a first step, a database of institutional information identifying alleged instances of NTMs for particular products and countries is constructed based on...

According to the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC), all quantitative restrictions on textile and apparel commodities are to be removed on January 1, 2005. This paper examines the economic impacts of the 2005 liberalization at the U.S. state level. The methodology utilizes a regional model...