When can a country be said to benefit from free trade?This question has obsessed economists for more than 200 years, and a definitive answer has never been provided. Continuing the influential work begun in The Gains from Trade and the Gains from Aid, (Routledge 1995), Murray Kemp here presents...

The main purpose of this note is to establish a precise version of the proposition that, in the context of a worldwide constituency, a customs union is more beneficial or less harmful than a comparable but distinct free trade association. It is shown that, corresponding to each feasible...