Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO), based on regional and multicultural cooperation, has focused on the improvement of living standards, collective as well as individual prosperity of people and economic development of member’s states. Since February 1992 ECO has been expanded to ten as the result of collapse of the Soviet Union. Of course, gas and oil are very important factors in this re...

During negotiations of mega-regional trade agreements, state representatives have the incentive to demand that other parties align with their entrenched regulatory practices. Indeed, a country’s exporters will derive extensive benefits if negotiating partners fulfill these demands. Strictly pursuing self-interest, however, often leads to stalemate. When the United States (US) and European Union...

Although there is evidence that domestic politics matter for the formation of preferential trade agreements, the impact of large-scale changes in political institutions, especially in the direction of democratization, on economic integration has been given surprisingly short shrift in the previous literature. This study takes a first step toward developing such an explanation. It posits that, a...

Aid for trade constitutes the most successful initiative that has hitherto emerged from the multilateral trade negotiations under the Doha Development Agenda (DDA). Myriad studies show that international trade is essential in sustaining long-term growth and development and in reducing poverty. However, developing economies face market failures and binding constraints—from infrastructural shortc...

From World War I1 until about 1980, regional free trade agreements and global trade negotiations under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) could reasonably be seen as complements rather than substitutes-as two aspects of a broad march toward increasingly open international markets. Since then, however, the two have moved in opposite directions. The 1980s were marked by stunning an...