Trade policy commitments to lower import tariffs and to maintain tariffs at low levels entail short and long-run political-economic costs and benefits. Empirical work examining the relationship between such commitments and the exercise of trade policy flexibilities is still relatively nascent,...

This paper surveys empirically the broad features of trade policy in goods for 31 major economies that collectively represented 83 percent of the world's population and 91 percent of the world's GDP in 2013. It addresses the following five questions: Do some countries have more liberal trading...

Suppose that when addressing the question of "what's left for the WTO?," tariff negotiators relied not on the agenda established in 2001 but instead on the terms-of-trade theory of trade agreements to identify negotiating priorities. This paper uses the lens of the terms-of-trade theory to...

Suppose that when addressing the question of "what’s left for the WTO?," negotiators relied not on the agenda established in 2001 but instead on the terms-of-trade theory of trade agreements to identify tariff negotiating priorities. This paper uses the lens of the terms-of-trade theory to...