The paper discusses various milestones in the process of multilateral trade negotiations, pinpoints current challenges facing the world trading order, and proposes possible ways out of the persistent impasse. Hufbauer argues that the success of the multilateral approach is at least partly...

The Caribbean Forum-European Communities (CARIFORUM-EC) Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) represents a new era of development cooperation and trade relations between the European Union on the one hand, and a subgrouping of the African, Caribbean, and Pacific (ACP) group of countries on the...

We use a multi-country asymmetric oligopolistic framework for segmented markets to study the welfare effects of reducing tariff discrimination --- which we call a move towards Most Favored Nation tariffs. Both unilateral and multilateral reforms are considered. We investigate this issue under...

In this paper, I study the impact of the Most Favored Nation (MFN) principle of the GATT/WTO on the characterization of Pareto-improving bilateral trade agreements. The paper offers four main predictions. First, bilateral trade agreements improve the welfare of negotiating countries and leave...

The Most-Favored Nation (MFN) clause has long been suspected of creating a free rider problem in multilateral trade negotiations. To address this issue, we model multilateral negotiations as a mechanism design problem with voluntary participation. We show that an optimal mechanism induces only...

Membership in customs unions (CU) has proliferated in past decades; globally, 81 countries are now part of a CU. Much of this growth has been driven by countries upgrading their links from a free trade agreement (FTA) to CU. At the same time, the rapid formation of new FTAs among countries that...

Although it is well-known that a global trade regime best ensures economic welfare, there has nevertheless been a proliferation of free trade agreements (FTAs) between individual countries. This poses the challenge known as the “noodle bowl effect” — stemming from different rules of...

This essay underscores the importance of background understandings in general international law for interpreting brief, open-ended clauses such as MFN clauses. Contrary to Batifort and Heath's claim, I suggest that often interpreters of MFN clauses cannot limit themselves to the text, context,...

While “mega FTAs” and WTO-driven efforts at multilateral liberalisation dominate the agenda, customs unions (CU) are the silent success story of regional integration. Throughout the world, CUs have been superseding earlier FTAs, as new unions were formed or old ones expanded. Due to problems...

Do negotiated tariffs under the WTO deviate significantly from the first-best agreement? If so, why? To answer these questions, we consider two potential causes of deviation from the first-best in WTO negotiations: (i) a free-riding problem that may be caused by the WTO's nondiscrimination...