This paper indicates that the consequences of regional trade agreements for the world trade system may be deceiving—an arrangement’s apparent virtue may constitute the source of its drawback. In a model where governments have political, as well as economic, motivations, I show that a free trade area induces its members to reduce protection against the non-members, and to do so sufficiently deep...

We construct a time-variant, price-based measure of trade distortions in 28 manufacturing industries for a large sample of countries over the last four decades, documenting facts consistent with the argument that changes in relative prices are an important channel through which an economy’s openness affects outcomes. First, we find that price distortions at the aggregate level are negatively as...

The latest round of world trade negotiations, launched in Doha in 2001, has come to at least a temporary halt in the aftermath of the 2005 World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Hong Kong. The familiar arguments about the benefits of trade liberalization have been updated and forcefully reiterated: According to the World Bank and other leading analysts, massive computer modeling exercises sh...

This article examines the effect of overlapping institutions in trade policy, where the World Trade Organization, preferential trade agreements, and other economic negotiation venues give states many options for negotiating rules and settling disputes. This article argues that overlapping institutions influence trade politics at three stages: selection of venue, negotiation of liberalization co...

M economists accept that, in the long run, open economies fare better in aggregate than do closed ones, and that relatively open policies contribute significantly to development. Many commentators fear, however, that in the shorter run, one of the steps towards openness—trade liberalization— harms poorer actors in the economy, and that, even in the longer run, successful open regimes may leave ...