I show that there is a trade-off in the design of international agreements between depth and rigidity. Increasing the depth of required cooperation both lowers the likelihood of compliance with the treaty and decreases the stability of the regime. In contrast, as the rigidity of an agreement increases (and there is less opportunity for tolerated defection from treaty obligations), the likelihoo...

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...

As the chances of a successful conclusion to the Doha Round of trade liberalization under the WTO become increasingly problematic, so the pace of negotiating local free trade agreements (FTAs) is increasing. According to the WTO report, countries in the Asia-Pacific region are “consolidating their drive towards regionalism at an accelerated pace”. After the trade agreements between China an...

We argue that legislators’ trade attitudes reflect constituents’ economic interests. Concretely, we expect legislators from districts are highly competitive in international should be more supportive of agreements than noncompetitive districts. The strength this relationship lower multimember and for right-wing legislators. Data based on surveys with 3,576 16 Latin American countries 48 legisla...

The GATT/WTO and preferential trade agreements help member countries to achieve further gains from trade by promoting deeper trade liberalization. In general, free trade does not automatically follow from individualistic behavior. A major reason for this has to do with the existence of monopolistic power in trade. Trade liberalization requires that countries behave cooperatively and reciprocall...