Preferential Trade Agreements: A Law And Economics Analysis

This volume assembles a stellar group of scholars and experts to examine preferential trade agreements (PTAs), a topic that has time and again attracted the interest of analysts. It presents a discussion of the evolving economic analysis regarding PTAs and the various dysfunctions that continually place them among the priority items for (re)negotiation by the WTO. The book explores recent empirical research that casts doubt on the old “trade diversion” school and debates why the WTO should deal with PTAs and if PTAs belong under the mandate of the WTO as we now know it.

Kyle W. Bagwell is the Donald L. Lucas Professor of Economics at Stanford University. Professor Bagwell was a reporter for the American Law Institute in its study Principles of International Trade: The WTO. He serves as well as a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (International Trade Program). In his research, Professor Bagwell uses economic analysis to interpret and evaluate the design of the WTO. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society.

Petros C. Mavroidis is the Edwin B. Parker Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, New York. He also serves as Professor of Law at the University of Neuchâtel and is Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), London. He specializes in the law and the WTO and serves as the Legal Advisor to the WTO in the Technical Cooperation Division, where he assists developing countries in WTO dispute settlement proceedings. He was also the chief co-reporter of the American Law Institute project Principles of International Trade: The WTO.