This paper introduces a new data set and establishes a set of basic facts and patterns regarding the trade that countries fight about under World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement. The paper characterizes the scope of products, as well as the levels of and changes to the trade values,...

Four West African nations have demanded that the World Trade Organization's Doha Development Agenda include a Cotton Initiative that involves two issues: cutting cotton subsidies and tariffs, and assisting farm productivity growth in Africa. The authors provide estimates of the potential...

With the success of the World Trade Organization and its predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, in reducing conventional tariff barriers, much of the recent focus of regional and multilateral trade agreements has switched to non-tariff measures, both border and...

How high were import tariffs when GATT participants began negotiations to reduce them in 1947? Establishing this starting point is key to determining how successful the GATT has been in bringing down trade barriers. If the average tariff level was about 40 percent, as commonly reported, the...

The WTO has delivered policy outcomes that are very different from those likely to emerge out of the recent wave of preferential trade agreements (PTAs). Should economists see this as an efficient institutional hand-off, where the WTO has carried trade liberalization as far as it can manage, and...

This survey concludes that including agriculture in the Doha Agenda negotiations was important both economically and politically, although the political resistance to reform is particularly strong in this sector. While agriculture accounts for less than 10 percent of merchandise trade, high and...

Critical appraisals of the current and potential benefits from developing country engagement in the World Trade Organization (WTO) focus mainly on the Doha Round of negotiations. This paper examines developing country participation in the WTO dispute settlement system to enforce foreign market...

This paper examines trade policies in Peru and Argentina since the reforms of the 1990s. Peru provides a valuable example of sustaining reform. Leaders have used negotiations and other international instruments to disseminate among Peruvians a positive vision of Peru in the international economy...

This paper surveys political-economic research on the variety of instruments that governments use to conduct international trade policy. It presents key insights on the relationships between instruments such as tariffs, quotas, voluntary export restraints, and other nontariff barriers, as well...

The volume-based Special Safeguard Mechanism was proposed as essential for small, poor farmers and became the proximate cause of the collapse of the Doha Agenda negotiations in 2008. But is it helpful for these farmers, given that it is likely to be applied when farm output is depressed and many...