The Kemp-Wan proposition on the existence of Pareto-improving customs union is extended by allowing the customs union to make trade agreements with non-members. We show that given some unused gains from trade a customs union improving its member' welfare with unchanged non-members' welfare...

Economic theory suggests that countries' tariff commitments in trade agreements reflect their import market power at the time of negotiations. However, as countries grow, their market power in different sectors can change in unforeseen ways and their commitments may no longer reflect changed...

In a world economy interconnected by global value chains, where domestic productivity depends on the availability of imported inputs, the vast majority of workers stand to lose from protectionism. To exemplify this, we provide a quantitative assessment of the aggregate and distributional effects...

PTAs are generally negotiated without any tariff concessions or transfers to non-member countries. Can such a PTA benefit the neighbors’ welfare? In a two-good competitive equilibrium model in the absence of an entrepôt, a PTA without concessions to the outside will hurt the outsider’s...

This paper reviews the most significant recent developments in the theory of trade agreements. The paper offers an integrated approach to evaluating trade agreements, and uses the approach to present results on preferential and multilateral trade agreements. The paper identifies also several...

The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) is a Free Trade Area (FTA) regional trade agreement in Africa. Currently, Ethiopia is negotiating to join COMESA FTA. This study assesses the impact of three regional trade arrangements, COMESA FTA, customs unions, and the European...

In February 2016, twelve Pacific Rim countries signed the agreement on the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), one of the largest and most comprehensive trade deals in history. While there are several estimates of the likely effects of the TPP, there is no systematic study on the effects on all...

Despite recent modifications, the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between the European Union (EU) and West African (WA) countries is still being criticized for its potential detrimental effects on WA countries. This paper provides updated evidence on the impact of the EPA on these...

In this paper, we tried to highlight all the kinds of temporal uncertainties that AGOA creates on the eligible countries. With a dynamic model in presence of technologic transfers and irreversibility of investments, we found that long run uncertainty has a negative impact not only on investment...

This paper reviews the most significant recent developments in the theory of trade agreements. The paper offers an integrated approach to evaluating trade agreements, and uses the approach to present results on preferential and multilateral trade agreements. The paper identifies also several...