The rise of offshoring of intermediate inputs raises important questions for commercial policy. Do the distinguishing features of offshoring introduce novel reasons for trade policy intervention? Does offshoring create new problems of global policy cooperation whose solutions require...

We propose a model of trade agreements in which contracting is costly, and as a consequence the optimal agreement may be incomplete. In spite of its simplicity, the model yields rich predictions on the structure of the optimal trade agreement and how this depends on the fundamentals of the...

This paper presents both analytics and numerical simulation results relevant to proposals for carbon motivated regional trade agreements summarized in Dong amp; Whalley(2008). Unlike traditional regional trade agreements, by lowing tariffs on participant's low carbon emission goods and setting...

Using US Census data for 1990-2000, we estimate effects of NAFTA on US wages, focusing on differences by gender. We find that NAFTA tariff reductions are associated with substantially reduced wage growth for married blue-collar women, much larger than the effect for other demographic groups. We...

As trade agreements have evolved and gone beyond import tariffs and quotas into regulatory rules and harmonization, they have become more difficult to fit into received economic theory. Nevertheless, most economists continue to regard trade agreements such as the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP)...

We study whether tariff preferences conferred on South Korean goods through the implementation of the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS) drew U.S. import demand away from other U.S. trading partners through the phenomenon known as trade diversion. In the two years following the...

We provide theoretical and empirical evidence that policy uncertainty can significantly affect firm level investment and entry decisions in the context of international trade. When market entry costs are sunk, policy uncertainty can create a real option value of waiting to enter foreign markets...

This paper argues that the pursuit of special and differential treatments (SDT) by developing countries has hampered the liberalization of global service trade, which is one of the causes of the only slowing improving of service efficiency globally. We use value added per worker as a proxy of...

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...

What does economics have to say about the design of international trade agreements? We review a literature on this question, providing detailed coverage on three key design features of the GATT/WTO: reciprocity, nondiscrimination as embodied in the MFN principle, and tariff bindings and binding...