By freeing Europe's regional and international trade from tariffs and other trade barriers, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) has often been hailed as a key factor in promoting the post-war economic recovery in Western Europe and in preventing a return to the disaster of the...

This paper presents an empirical analysis of the macroeconomic and microeconomic factors underlying the causes and persistence of the U.S. external deficit in the 1980s. The paper begins with a review of the extensive literature on this subject, and then outlines an analytical framework that...