Will the current wave of regional integration arrangements lead to the world being divided into competing inward-looking trading blocs? Or will it lead to a more open multilateral trading system? Using a multi-country political economy model, and after having shown that global free trade is...

Preferential trading agreements (PTAs) are increasingly including elements of"deep"integration--efforts to agree on common regulatory regimes. The author explores what the PTA experience suggests about the relationship between shallow integration--attaining unconditional intra-area free trade...

This paper investigates the role played by domestic importers and foreign exporters in improving preferential access to the domestic market. To this end, the framework used in this paper extends the protection for sale analysis to explicitly model the role of domestic importers and foreign...

There has been an explosion in the number of preferential trade agreements in the past decade. Preferential trade agreements are characterized by liberalization with respect to only a few partners and thus they can potentially clash with and retard multilateral trade liberalization. Despite this...

The author combines two theories - one about how multilateral trade liberalization affects regional integration, the other about how it affects political disintegration - to explain why the ratio of free trade areas to customs unions has increased over time. Ethier argues (1998, 1999) that...

The author uses detailed trade, tariff, and income data for countries involved in 91 trade agreements negotiated since 1980 to test for reciprocity in free trade agreements. The results offer strong evidence of reciprocity in North-North and South-South free trade agreements, but there is little...

The collapse of central planning set in motion the reintegration of the Central European countries into the world economy. The European Union (EU), because of its proximity, economic weight, and policy-induced deep integration, has shaped these countries'politics, and economics. The process of...

In the aftermath of the breakup of the Soviet Union, trade among the new independent states collapsed. To help reestablish interstate trade, the 12 members of the Commonwealth of independent States (CIS) established a Free Trade Area. More recently, four members of the CIS -Belarus, Kazakstan,...

The author reviews the static theory of regional integration arrangements, identifying and analyzing the impact of such arrangements on the trade and welfare of member countries, nonmember countries, and the world at large. He develops eight policy guidelines that apply mainly to small trading...

Subregional trade arrangements (RTAs) in Eastern and Southern Africa have proliferated in the past 10 to 15 years. The small size of most of the countries in the region, some of which are landlocked, and the security needs in the post independence period largely explain the rapid expansion....