Economic theory has made considerable progress in explaining why sovereign countries cooperate in trade. Central to most theories of trade cooperation are issues of self-enforcement: The threat of reprisal by an aggrieved party maintains the initial balance of concessions and prevents...

This paper is a contribution to the literature on rational design of trade agreements. The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an incomplete contract among sovereign states. Incomplete contracts contain gaps. Ex post, contractual gaps may leave gains from trade unrealized; they may create...

This paper constitutes an attempt to reframe and eventually deflate the ongoing “compliance-vs.-rebalancing” debate which has permeated WTO scholarship for the last 10 years. Our main criticism concerns the substance of the entire debate. We find that scholars on both sides of the...

Despite being an agreement designed for the fastest developing sectors, the signatories of the Information Technology Agreement (ITA) in the World Trade Organization (WTO) have so far failed to re-negotiate the coverage of the ITA (concluded in 1996) due to a longstanding dispute amongst its...

At the Ninth Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) held in Bali on 3–6 December 2013, the ministers agreed upon the WTO Agreement on Trade Facilitation (ATF). This paper assesses the level of ambition of the ATF from two angles. First, the use of softening language in...

This paper argues that the formation of regional integration frameworks can be best understood as a dominant state's attempt to create a preferred regional framework in which it can exercise exclusive influence. In this context, it is important to observe not only which countries are included in...

Are trade facilitation measures under free trade agreements (FTAs) discriminatory? This important question has yet to be sufficiently explored by the existing literature on trade facilitation. Despite the multilateral scope and non-discriminatory objectives of trade facilitation measures, some...

This paper investigates empirically the role of Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) as determinants of migration inflows for 29 OECD countries in the period 1998-2008. By increasing information about signatory countries, PTAs are expected to drive migration flows towards member countries....

This article provides a review of literature on African Agency and the drivers of change within EU–African trade politics in negotiations on Economic Partnership Agreements between the European Union and African governments.

Regional trade agreements (RTAs) have become an indelible feature of the international trading landscape. Most, if not all, RTAs contain provisions that establish procedures for resolving disputes among their signatory members. Yet, the design and functioning of these dispute settlement...