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...

South Africa has very high unemployment, yet few adults work informally in small firms. This paper tests whether centralized bargaining, by which unionized large firms extend arbitration agreements to non-unionized smaller firms, contributes to this problem. While local labor market characteristics influence the location of these agreements, their coverage is spatially discontinuous, allowing i...

Scholars have argued that the malpractice system would be better off if patients had the option of waiving the right to sue for malpractice in exchange for a lower fee. Some doctors have tried to follow this advice by having their patients sign medical malpractice exculpatory agreements, but courts usually have refused to enforce these agreements, invoking a void-for-public-policy rationale. Th...

Participation in international trade potentially brings huge benefits to developing countries. However, the design and setup of the international trade regime, most importantly the rules and regulations stipulated in the agreements of the World Trade Organization (WTO), often make it difficult for developing countries to fully tap this potential. As will be argued in this paper using descriptiv...

Previous experimental work provides encouraging support for some of the central assumptions underlying Hart and Moore (2008)’s theory of contractual reference points. However, existing studies ignore realistic aspects of trading relationships such as informal agreements and ex post renegotiation. We investigate the relevance of these features experimentally. Our evidence indicates that the cent...

In recent years, supply and demand of streaming applications via the Internet (e.g., video-on-demand, live TV coverage, video conferencing) have increased. The idea behind streaming Internet services is to avoid a time-consuming download, and instead, make the user view streaming content in real-time without delay. However, today’s Internet traffic is routed on a best effort basis without any s...

Common–interest community agreements on private lands provide opportunity and scale for wildlife management.— Private lands are critical to conservation planning for wildlife, worldwide. Agriculture subsidies, tax incentives, and conservation easements have been successfully used as tools to convert cropland to native vegetation. However, uncertain economies threaten the sustainability of these...

Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) are important as they can create an economic impact on international businesses and influence global policies. The key objective of this study is to understand whether India's agricultural export competitiveness with its partners has improved after the creation these Agreements. applies Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) index gauge India RTA partners. data be...

Recently, First Nation (FN) organizations have entered into agreements with federal and provincial government representatives to remediate radar-line sites in Ontario. These agreements stipulated that FN people would take part in the site delineation and remediation process to gain job experience and economic benefits. One important aspect of the process was protecting FN personnel from contami...