We develop a new theoretical framework of trade agreement (TA) formation, called a "parallel contest", that emphasizes the political fight over TA ratification within countries. TA ratification is inherently uncertain in each country, where anti- and pro-trade interest groups contest each other...

We address the trade effect of restrictive product standards on the margins of trade, by matching a detailed panel of French firm exports with a new database compiling the list of Sanitary and Phyto-Sanitary regulatory measures that have been raised as a concern in dedicated committees of the...

This paper introduces a new data set and establishes a set of basic facts and patterns regarding the trade that countries fight about under World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement. The paper characterizes the scope of products, as well as the levels of and changes to the trade values,...

The Special Safeguard Mechanism was a key issue in the July 2008 failure to reach agreement in the World Trade Organization negotiations under the Doha Development Agenda. It includes both price and quantity-triggered measures. This paper uses a stochastic simulation model of the world wheat...

Four West African nations have demanded that the World Trade Organization's Doha Development Agenda include a Cotton Initiative that involves two issues: cutting cotton subsidies and tariffs, and assisting farm productivity growth in Africa. The authors provide estimates of the potential...

We capitalize on the latest developments in the empirical structural gravity literature to revisit the question of whether and how much does GATT/WTO membership affect international trade. We are the first to capture the non-discriminatory nature of GATT/WTO commitments by measuring the effects...

The Brazil-Taxation dispute concerns the complaints taken to the World Trade Organisation by the European Union and Japan against seven different Brazilian industrial subsidy programmes. One concerned the automotive sector and represents a clear case of policies dictated by strong domestic...