Preferential trade agreements (PTAs) have spread rapidly around the world since the 1990s. In the Americas, the proliferation of trade agreements with countries from within and beyond the region have resulted in a ‘spaghetti bowl’ of overlapping rules and regulations, some of which address...

We show that multilateral tariff binding liberalization substantially impacts the nature and extent of Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA) formation. First, it shapes the nature of forces constraining expansion of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). The constraining force is a free riding incentive of...

This paper provides practical techniques to policymakers for evaluating the potential economic effects of a Free Trade Agreement (FTA). To this end, the paper discusses how to apply three methods: (i) trade indicators, (ii) SMART (Software for Market Analysis and Restrictions on Trade) in WITS...