This paper investigates the impact of customs unions (CUs) on the ability of countries to multilaterally cooperate within an economic environment characterized by trade-flow volatility. We find that the initiation of CU talks results in an easing of multilateral trade tensions, especially with regard to the employment of “special”-protection instruments, such as anti-dumping duties or safeguards. However, once the CU agreements come into force, a retreat to a more protectionist trading environment becomes necessary so that multilateral cooperation does not break down. Interestingly, in comparison with the pre-CU world, the utilization of “special”-protection tools in the post-CU world is more severe for “high” import volumes, but is less frequent overall. Moreover, “normal” protection remains low, largely unchanged from the pre-CU era.

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This paper explores the implications of fairness and reciprocity for self-enforcing international environmental agreements on pollution abatement. Reciprocal countries reward fair behavior (positive reciprocity), but retaliate against countries behaving unfairly (negative reciprocity). We demonstrate that reciprocal countries that have moderate expectations from each other with respect to their national abatement strategies can support a greater degree of environmental cooperation than self-interested ones. However, when only very high abatement standards are deemed fair, then reciprocity could have a detrimental effect on international environmental cooperation. Our model therefore provides a novel perspective on the role of expectations in environmental negotiations.

Are preferential trade agreements (PTAs) stumbling blocks or building blocks towards multilateral trade liberalization? We address this question by investigating the effects of the negotiation and implementation of PTAs on the use of antidumping (AD) (i.e., the most common form of contingent trade protection) by member countries against non-members, as there has been a concurrent surge in regionalism and AD activity since the 1990s. Theoretically-derived empirical predictions are supported by the empirical analysis based on the 15 most intense users of AD. The results demonstrate that both the negotiation and the implementation of PTAs lead to fewer AD measures against non-member countries, except for members of customs-union agreements in force facing large import surges from non-members. Thus, our results highlight a building-block effect of PTAs on multilateral trade cooperation when it comes to AD protection.

We investigate the implications of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) for interstate con ‡ict. We set up a two-stage game with three competing importers, where …rst, two of the countries decide on whether to initiate war against each other, and subsequently, all three countries select their import tari¤s. We show that PTAs produce both a "peace-creation" and a "peace-diversion" e¤ect, whereby they reduce the likelihood of con ‡ict between member countries (peace creation), but could render the eruption of war between member and non-member countries more likely (peace diversion). This paper is the …rst to identify and explicitly model the peace-diversion e¤ect of PTAs, and is also the only one in this literature to endogenize countries' terms of trade. We use data from the Correlates of War project to empirically test these predictions, and after controlling for endogeneity, we …nd robust evidence of both peace creation and peace diversion in relation to free-trade-area as well as customs-union establishment.