We study in this paper the welfare effects of different types of trade agreements and the equilibrium outcome of trade negotiation, when the objective of each government is politically motivated. We explore a three-country and three-good trade model with endogenous tariffs and export subsidies in a political economy framework. In this context, we suggest that the welfare effects of both bilater...

Small nations fear that FTAs with larger, richer nations will erode their industrial bases. These concerns are recognized in FTA and multilateral talks: small nations may explicitly or implicitly maintain higher trade barriers. Using a model where symmetric liberalization de-industrializes small, poor nations, we characterize the path of protection-asymmetries that allow liberalization without ...

The liberalization of international trade and foreign direct investment through multilateral, regional and bilateral agreements has had profound implications for the structure and nature of food systems, and therefore, for the availability, nutritional quality, accessibility, price and promotion of foods in different locations. Public health attention has only relatively recently turned to the ...

This paper analyses GATT/WTO trade negotiations in an oligopolistic multicountry setting and identifies a new rationale for trade agreements. When set unilaterally, tariffs are inefficiently high, both for familiar terms-of-trade reasons, but also to restrict market access of foreign firms. Trade agreements neutralise both the terms-of-trade and the market-access externalities and help countrie...

The growth of regional trade blocks has been one of the major developments in international relations in recent years. Regional agreements vary widely but, all have the objective of reducing barriers to trade between member countries that in most cases result in increasingly trade flows and economic growth. This paper attempts to explore the results of trade integration in ECO, EU and OIC block...

Many recent international agreements sponsored by bodies such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO), aim to facilitate the global free flow of goods, services and capital, by opening markets under the threat of trade sanctions. Nation States signing such agreements, in particular the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), agree to suffer a sovereignty deficit in order to...

This paper reviews the theoretical and the empirical literature on regionalism. The formation of regional trade agreements has been, by far, the most popular form of reciprocal trade liberalization in the last fifteen years. The discriminatory character of these agreements has raised three main concerns: that trade diversion would be rampant, because special interest groups would induce governm...