Since taking office the Administration of George W. Bush has pursued a trade policy known as Competitive Liberalization. This policy envisages a series of mutually-reinforcing steps to open markets abroad to U.S. companies, to strengthen market-oriented laws and regulations overseas, and to...

The Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations was suspended for almost six months in 2006. The purpose of this paper is to ask what scholars can learn about the political economy of reciprocal trade liberalisation from this suspension. Specifically, four potential explanations for this...

The rules of the trade policy arena differ from those in academia. How can an economic researcher survive, let alone thrive, in what may appear to be a trade policy jungle? The purpose of this paper is not just to offer guidance in this respect but also to think through the factors that...

The European Union is the world's largest trader, a fact that on the face of it ought to convert into considerable clout in international commercial negotiations. Yet, since the World Trade Organization's (WTO's) creation in 1995, it is difficult to point to a string of successes for the...