We provide a synthesis of the theoretical models that study the use of escape clauses, also known as safeguards, in multilateral and preferential trade agreements. We consider models that explain this type of flexibility based on economic efficiency, political economy shocks, and...

A short--run model for estimating the procompetitive effects of foreign competition on markups in an oligopolistic, domestic industry is developed and estimated using data on the Australian automobile industry. Estimates reveal that these effects are rather large and cannot be ignored when...

As tariff barriers have fallen worldwide, regulation of domestic policy has become increasingly important in international trade agreements. This has led to the emergence of a theoretical literature addressing the integration of perfectly observable domestic policy into trade agreements....

Import regulations are globally the most prevalent form of intervention in international trade. The regulations should, under rules of the WTO, protect consumers and the environment but can be used to protect producers. We investigate the ambiguity of intent. We set out a model that when applied...

We propose a simple and flexible econometric approach to quantify ex-ante the “deep” impact of trade liberalization and the “hard” effects of protection with the empirical structural gravity model. Specifically, we argue that the difference between the estimates of border indicator...

This paper examines the determinants of “echoing” in antidumping (AD) cases (i.e., different countries sequentially imposing AD measures on the same product from the same exporter). We develop a dynamic game in which two competing importers can choose to impose an AD duty on a third...

As labor provisions in regional trade agreements proliferate, critics contend that they are used for protectionist purposes. Existing categories of labor clauses lead to inconsistent empirical results. We propose and apply a new typology for labor clauses to all WTO-notified regional trade...

This paper examines how EU Technical Barriers to Trade (TBTs) reshape firms’ global supply chains, extending Grossman et al. (2024) to incorporate adaptation costs between sourcing partners. To test the model’s predictions, we construct a novel dataset linking EU TBTs to French firm-level...

This paper explores the ramifications of customs unions (CUs) for multilateral trade cooperation within an economic environment characterized by trade-volume volatility and in a competing-exporters framework. We demonstrate that the parallel formation of different CUs leads to a gradual but...

This article investigates how sectorial characteristics determine the probability of industries receiving an anti-dumping (AD) duty, delving into the economic literature on the political economy of protection, market competition and trade reform in Brazil. By focusing on when the AD was granted,...