Public opinion, lobbying and elections have important effects on the formation of trade policy in democracies. This paper attempts to explain how lobbying expenditures can influence the outcome of an election fought over trade policy. Voters are assumed to own both capital and labour. The...

We develop a partial equilibrium, sequential model of trade negotiation between an OECD country and two developing countries. First, we show that there are substantive qualitative and quantitative differences in the state of market access and domestic support that emerge under possible...

A model of strategic trade policy under integrated markets is presented and optimal trade policies are derived under assumptions of both complete and incomplete information. With the assumption of complete information it is shown that the optimal policy is an import tariff (export subsidy) when...

In 1965, Cooper and Massell (CM), using a partial-equilibrium trade model, reached the conclusion that a policy of unilateral tariff reduction (UTR) is superior to the formation of a customs union (CU). Wonnacott and Wonnacott (WW) challenged this conclusion in 1981 by claiming to show that UTR...

Price undertakings are alternatives to imposing anti-dumping duties. In the past, almost half of EU anti-dumping measures were price undertakings. This has drastically changed in recent years. We identify four reasons for the decreasing relevance of price undertakings. First, prior to the...

This paper contributes to analysis of the extent to which multilateral trading agreements reached under GATT can liberalize the world economy. Its main conclusion is that free trade is not sustainable if production is fixed exogenously and utility is non-transferable. If production is fixed and...

This paper examines the optimal export policies when ex ante negotiation over subcontract manufacturing occurs between two competing international-firms. It show that it could be optimal for the exporting country to adopt either a different or a parallel trade policy between the two exporting...

Infrastructure quality is a crucial determinant of trade. To assess the importance of regional infrastructure externalities, we use detailed overland transit information from an original road network database. Gravity model simulations suggest that an ambitious but feasible road upgrade could...

A few studies have shown that free trade agreements have affected the pattern of state exports. This paper examines the effects of free trade agreements on US state vegetable and fruit trade flows. We propose a single commodity gravity equation to overcome a common shortcoming of most gravity...