We study the implications of customs union formation for multilateral tariff cooperation. We model cooperation in multilateral trade policy as self-enforcing, in that it involves balancing the current gains from deviating unilaterally from an agreed-upon trade policy against the future losses...

We consider a 3 country world in which each country's import market is served by competing exporters from its 2 trading partners. We assume that weak multilateral enforcement mechanisms prevent governments from implementing efficient trade policies through a multilateral agreement requiring...

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...

This paper assesses the effects of reducing tariffs under the Doha Round on market access for developing countries. It shows that for many developing countries, actual preferential access is less generous than it appears because of low product coverage or complex rules of origin. Thus lowering...

This paper empirically examines recently declassified data from the GATT/WTO on tariff bargaining. We document eight stylized facts about these interconnected high-stakes international negotiations. We use detailed product-level offer and counteroffer data to examine several questions about...

We formalize the notion that GATT exceptions such as antidumping and escape clause actions can act as insurance for import competing sectors affected by adverse price shocks. We use a general equilibrium model with several import competing sectors and assume incomplete markets so that agents...

Using actual trade and tariff data for the United States and the European Community, this paper demonstrates how a trade negotiation such as the Tokyo Round, can be modelled as a game among countries attempting to minimize individual welfare loss functions. Once welfare functions are...

Trust beliefs are heterogeneous across individuals and, at the same time, persistent across generations. We investigate one mechanism yielding these dual patterns: false consensus. In the context of a trust game experiment, we show that individuals extrapolate from their own type when forming...

To what extent must nations cede control over their economic and social policies if global efficiency is to be achieved in an interdependent world? This question is at the center of the debate over the future role of GATT (and its successor, the WTO) in the realm of labor and environmental...

Trade negotiations occur through time and between the governments of many countries. An important issue is thus whether the value of concessions that a government wins in a current negotiation may be eroded in a future bilateral negotiation to which it is not party. In the absence of rules that...