This paper considers tariff phase-outs in multilateral and preferential agreements. The paper finds that early GATT rounds primarily were over bindings of existing rates and that it was not until the 1962-67 Kennedy Round's 50% reduction in manufactured goods tariffs that time paths of tariff...

Using US Census data for 1990-2000, we estimate effects of NAFTA on US wages, focusing on differences by gender. We find that NAFTA tariff reductions are associated with substantially reduced wage growth for married blue-collar women, much larger than the effect for other demographic groups. We...

This paper uses a case study approach to explore the effects of NAFTA and GATT membership on innovation and trade in the Mexican soaps, detergents and surfactants (SDS) industry. Several basic findings emerge. First, the most fundamental effect of NAFTA and the GATT on the SDS industry was to...

One of the motivations for NAFTA from the US point of view was to reduce the" incentives for Mexican migration into the US. Unskilled rural males are a primary source of" illegal immigration and also Mexico's relatively abundant factor. This group should therefore" be made better off by trade...

In this paper, we derive three lessons from Mexico's experience. First, deep reforms like trade liberalization are not likely to happen by government decree. Instead, they usually come about when the unanimous blocking of reform by powerful elites breaks down. In the case of Mexico, this...

This paper evaluates the influence of diverse U.S. agricultural interest groups on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Under NAFTA, licenses and quotas that restricted agricultural trade between Mexico and the United States were converted to tariffs in January 1994 and all tariffs...

A free trade agreement supports global free trade since trade barriers tend to divert trade in favor of members, but not reduce imports. The term: 'mutual assured deterrence' is used to refer to a regional free trade association that has the feature that no member can gain individually from the...

In this paper, I study the effect of economic integration with the United States on state-industry employment growth in Mexico. I disentangle the effects of two opposing forces on regional labor demand: transport-cost considerations, which, all else equal, encourage firms to relocate their...

Why have white, less educated voters left the Democratic Party over the past few decades? Scholars have proposed ethnocentrism, social issues and deindustrialization as potential answers. We highlight the role played by the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). In event-study...

Theoretical and applied work in industrial-organization approaches to international trade typically assume either that there are fixed numbers of firms, or that there is free entry and exit with a continuum of firms. This paper makes a first step toward a more realistic approach in which firms...