We consider the purpose and design of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and its predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and review recent developments in the relevant theoretical and empirical literature. We describe the GATT/WTO architecture and briefly trace its...

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...

What do trade negotiators negotiate about? There are two distinct theoretical approaches in the economics literature that offer an answer to this question: the terms-of-trade theory and the commitment theory. The terms-of-trade theory holds that trade agreements are useful to governments as a...

We explore the impact of the formation of regional free trade agreements on the ability of countries to maintain low cooperative multilateral tariffs. We assume that countries can not make binding international commitments, but are instead limited to self-enforcing arrangements. Specifically, we...

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...

A fundamental objective of the Doha Round of WTO negotiations is to improve the trading prospects of developing countries. The 2001 declaration from the WTO Ministerial Conference in Doha, Qatar, commits the member governments to negotiations aimed at substantial improvements in market access...

Existing theories of trade agreements suggest that GATT/WTO efforts to reign in export subsidies represent an inefficient victory for exporting governments that comes at the expense of importing governments. Building on the Cournot delocation model first introduced by Venables (1985), we derive...

and non-discrimination, the two principles that are the pillars of the multi- lateral trading system as embodied in GATT and its successor, the WTO. We show that GATT's principle of reciprocity serves to neutralize the world-price effects of a country's trade policy decisions, and hence can...

Why do governments seek restrictions on the use of export subsidies through reciprocal trade agreements such as GATT? With existing arguments, it is possible to understand GATT's restrictions on export subsidies as representing an inefficient victory of the interests of exporting governments...

When markets are imperfectly competitive, trade policies can alter the terms of trade, shift profits from one country to another, and moderate or exacerbate existing distortions that are associated with the presence of monopoly power. In light of the various ways in which trade policies may...