During recent decades there has been substantial momentum for trade liberalization. At the same time, multinational production has become increasingly important in international competition. In this paper we show that these phenomena may be linked through environmental policy. When the national governments cannot use direct trade policy measures, environmental policy is distorted towards enhanc...

as regional integration agreements (RIAs)—is one of the major international relations developments of recent years. Most industrial and developing countries in the world are members of a regional integration agreement, and many belong to more than one: more than one-third of world trade takes place within such agreements. 1 The structure of regional agreements varies hugely, but all have one th...

In this paper, the authors start from the observation of two apparently contradictory trends: the increasing regionalization of trade and the proliferation of regional trade agreements, on the one hand, and the increase of the average number of trading partners of each country and of the trading distances over time due to decreasing transportation and communication costs, on the other, pointing...

Events of the past two decades have generated increasing concern about the direction of the world trading system. While the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) helped orchestrate the substantial reduction in tariffs after World War II, the multilateral approach to trade liberalisation has encountered difficulty in stemming the proliferation of non-tariff trade barriers and in extendin...

While it is widely acknowledged that international standards facilitate trade much less is known about certification requirements and mutually recognition of certification results. In our paper, we examine the impact of ISO 9000 certifications and the multilateral recognition arrangement for international acceptance of ISO 9000 certificates of the International Accreditation Forum (IAF-MLA) on ...

We explain how the structure of multi-national or multi-regional environmental agreements affect their chance of success. Trade in emissions permits has ambiguous and in some cases surprising effects on both the equilibrium level of abatement, and on the ability to persuade nations or regions to participate in environmental agreements. An escape clause policy and a safety valve policy have esse...