Trade Unions in a Free Society

Free Trade, Customs Unions, and Transfers

All countries would agree to immediate global free trade if countries were compensated for any terms-of-trade losses with transfers from countries whose terms-of-trade improve, and if customs unions were required to have no effects on non-member countries. Global free trade with transfers is in the core of a Kemp-WanGrinols customs union game. (52 words)

Free Trade Agreements versus Customs Unions:

Overlapping bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) are proliferating in East Asia. Quite a few economists worry about the spaghetti bowl phenomenon expected from the proliferating East Asian regional trade agreements (RTAs).The complicated web of hub-and-spoke type of FTAs can result in high costs for verifying rules of origin (RoO). As an alternative policy option to avoid the negative effect ...

Trade Unions in Germany

Trade unions and development

Bayes Network Analysis of Trade Effects of Currency Unions and Free Trade Agreements

We investigate the effects of trade and currency unions on trade within the reduced form gravity model. The database is a standard database in this field for around 200 countries over the last fifty years. The statistical model we use is a Bayes network from the machine learning and the artificial intelligence research which generalizes many standard econometric models. The emphasis in this pap...