The GATT, which later became the WTO, has contributed to the expansion and activation of world trade by assisting trading partners to establish and enforce international trade rules through multilateral trade negotiations. Currently negotiations for new trade rules are continuing by launching...

This article focuses on a less scrutinized aspect of the WTO dispute settlement system – non-litigated disputes. Legal rules concerning consultation and settlement during the panel proceedings are analyzed with the case laws. We then propose, and empirically analyze, several key economic...

Considering the third-country effects on bilateral incentives to sign a new PTA, we develop a theory-based empirical approach to access how a country's pre-existing PTAs affect her formation of a new PTA. Our empirical analysis using the theory-based measures of these effects confirms that a...