This paper challenges the contention that WTO rules had much impact on state behaviour during the recent global economic crisis. Evidence on the variety of discrimination implemented by governments, characteristics of the recent systemic crisis, as well as on certain, often overlooked features...

This paper fits a gravity model to the trade of 76 market economies. It then applies the model to data on East European economies to estimate what their trading potential might have been, had behaved like market economies in the mid-1980s. At existing levels of national income, the...

The Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations was suspended for almost six months in 2006. The purpose of this paper is to ask what scholars can learn about the political economy of reciprocal trade liberalisation from this suspension. Specifically, four potential explanations for this...

A countertrade contract ties an export to an import. Usually, countertrade is seen as a form of bilateralism and reciprocity and thus as an inefficient form of international exchange. In this paper we argue that there are circumstances where the tying of two technologically unrelated trade flows...

The theoretical literature follows two different approaches to explain the endogenous formation of a Customs Union (CU). The first one explains CU formation through the willingness of integrating partners to exploit terms-of-trade effects. Indeed, as the union forms, the 'domestic market' gets...

The welfare effects of PTAs are most directly linked to changes in trade prices, i.e., the terms of trade. This paper employs a simple strategic pricing game in segmented markets to measure the effects of MERCOSUR on the pricing of 'non-member' exports to the region. Working with detailed data...

This paper appraises the arguments that the creation of the EC has increased world protectionism <MI>relative to what it would otherwise have been<D>. Models of tariff bargaining between trade blocs suggest some increase, because the optimum tariff is higher for larger blocs, but this is not...</d></mi>

This paper constructs a simulation model of the EC footwear market with which to consider the effects of EC trade policies. It examines the Southern enlargement of the EC, the quotas imposed on Korean and Taiwanese sales - initially in France and Italy and subsequently, in line with the `1992'...

While barriers to trade in most goods and some services including capital flows have been reduced considerably over the past two decades, many remain. Such policies harm most the economies imposing them, but the worst of the merchandise barriers (in agriculture and textiles) are particularly...

In the aftermath of the international debt crisis of the 1980s reciprocal trade arrangements experienced a resurgence. This paper examines how countertrade can help highly indebted countries to finance imports if they are not able to use standard credit arrangements. It compares the credit...