We provide a simple but novel model of trade agreements that highlights the role of transaction costs, renegotiation and dispute settlement. The model allows us to characterize the appropriate remedy for breach and whether the agreement should be structured as a system of "property rights" or...

This paper analyzes GATT and its dispute settlement procedure (DSP) in the context of a supergame model of international trade featuring both explicit and implicit agreements. An explicit agreement, such as GATT, may be violated at some positive cost in addition to retaliatory actions that might...

Formal economic analysis of trade agreements typically treats disputes as synonymous with concerns about enforcement. But in reality, most WTO disputes involve disagreements of interpretation concerning the agreement, or instances where the agreement is simply silent. And some have suggested...

The great majority of international contracts provides that any disputes which may arise will be decided by arbitration. Legal scholars argue that international arbitration is leading to the development of legal doctrine attuned to the needs of business and independent of national laws. This...

This paper provides evidence that the variance of arbitrated wage settlements is systematically lower than the variance of wage settlements negotiated without arbitration using a panel of contracts between teachers and school boards in the Canadian province of British Columbia. This finding is...

This study analyzes a new set of data on the decisions of conventional arbitrators. The main goal is to draw inferences about the extent to which conventional arbitration decisions are fashioned as mechanical compromises of the parties' final offers, without reference to the exogenous facts...

This paper explores the characteristics of 238 patents on 94 "inventions" contributed by major multinational innovators to the "Eco-Patent Commons", which provides royalty-free access to third parties to patented climate change related innovations. By comparing the pledged patents to other...

The use of Payment for Environmental Services (PES) is not a new type of contract but they have become more in vogue because of the potential for sequestering carbon by paying to prevent deforestation and degradation of forest lands. We provide a framework utilizing transaction costs to...

We discuss global climate mitigation that builds on existing unilateral measures to cut emissions. We document and discuss the rationale for such unilateral measures argue that such measures have the potential to generate positive spillover effects both within and across countries. In a simple...