This paper shows that greater global spatial correlation of productivities can increase cross-country welfare dispersion by increasing the correlation between a country's productivity and its gains from trade. We causally validate this general-equilibrium prediction using a global climatic...

The drastic reductions in bound tariffs agreed by WTO members over the past half century have been accompanied by a substantial rise in non-tariff barriers to trade. Many commentators have drawn a causal link between these two phenomena, but there have been few attempts to empirically test this...

Twenty years of negotiations over reform of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) are yet to bear fruit. We use recent advances in the theory of a-priori voting power to present a formal quantitative appraisal of the "structural reforms" contained within eleven current reform proposals, and...

This report assesses conceptually and empirically the extent to which the stringency of environmental regulations drives international trade in environmental goods. Many of the measures governments adopt to address issues such as local air and water pollution or GHG emissions take the form of...

This paper is the first to estimate the effect of two international agreements (Rotterdam Convention, RC, and the Stockholm Convention, SC) in reducing trade in hazardous substances. We estimate the effects of ratification of these agreements on imports of the affected products putting emphasis...

With global specialization and trade, countries make directly but also indirectly use of the environment via traded goods. Based on the theory of comparative advantages, the Heckscher-Ohlin-Vanek approach, we are using the Ecological Footprint as a broad measure of environmental use because its...