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...

This chapter surveys empirically the broad features of trade policy in goods for 31 major economies that collectively represented 83% of the world's population and 91% of the world's GDP in 2013. We address five questions: Do some countries have more liberal trading regimes than others? Within...

This paper reviews the most significant recent developments in the theory of trade agreements. The paper offers an integrated approach to evaluating trade agreements, and uses the approach to present results on preferential and multilateral trade agreements. The paper identifies also several...

While the WTO process of multilateral trade liberalization encounters increasing resistance, in part because the most difficult issues have finally risen to the top of the agenda, market-based forces are contributing to international economic integration. One of the most potent are cross-border...

Brazil is currently immersed in the project of building a new common market, known as MERCOSUR, with its neighbors Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. It has largely been assumed that this project will produce economic growth and therefore be beneficial for the environment. However, this assumption...

Market access is the most important liberalizing principle in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). It entails a general prohibition of quantitative restrictions, which however is conditional on commitments undertaken by Members in their respective Schedules of Commitments. Case-law...

The deliberations at the Bali Ministerial Round seem to have broken the stalemate surrounding the food security provisions under the World Trade Organization (WTO) which in turn resulted in a tremendous impact on the ambitious Agreement on Trade Facilitation under the auspices of the...

This is one of 10 studies for the Copenhagen Consensus Project that sought to evaluate the most feasible opportunities to improve welfare globally and alleviate poverty in developing countries. Anderson argues that phasing out distortionary government subsidies and barriers to international...