The declared objective of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) is to promote free trade between member states. Nonetheless, an exhaustive study of bilateral merchandise trade based on a large panel data set led Rose (2004) to conclude that...

In this paper Kuznet's U-curve hypothesis is tested on two unbalanced panel data sets of 47 and 62 countries, for the period 1970-93, using two-way fixed and random effects models. Several competing model specifications are estimated and the one best fitting the data is selected by appropriate...

The declared objective of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) is to promote free trade between member states. Nonetheless, an exhaustive study of bilateral merchandise trade based on a large panel data set led Rose (2004) to conclude that...