A large and growing number of countries participate in multiple preferential trade agreements (PTAs), which increasingly entail broad cooperation over policies extending far beyond trade barriers. I review the traditional and non-traditional motives for PTAs and their empirical determinants as...

Several of the recently negotiated regional trade agreements (Canada-U.S., NAFTA, E.C.-Hungary/Poland/Czeck and Slovak Republics) contain significantly fewer concessions by the large countries to smaller countries than vice versa. Yet, it is small countries that have sought them and see...

Preferential liberalization of trade in services is a central feature of the new regionalism. "GATS-Plus" and "GATS-Minus" have become the distinctive characteristics of the service RTAs and this paper aims to investigate and distinguish the different effect of the "GATS-Plus" and "GATS-Minus"...

The last decade has witnessed an explosion in the number of regional trade agreements (RTAs). There seems to be a general if ill-defined belief on the part of many policy-makers, and among a number of academics as well, that there is more to a RTA than the traditional gains from trade. This...

This paper presents new data on the content of preferential trade agreements. The data contain detailed information on the 18 policy areas most frequently covered in preferential trade agreements, focusing on the stated objectives, substantive commitments, and other aspects such as transparency,...