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During the past 15 years, a wave of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) has swept the world. By early 2006, the WTO counts over 250 such agreements, with another 90 under negotiation. The growing body of research has identified a host of variables to explain the proliferation of PTAs, ranging from hegemonic decline, support for allies, stalled multilateral negotiations and competition over export markets, to PTAs as an insurance policy against trade disputes.Yet the literature suffers from three conspicuous defects. First, it cannot account for the regional variation: while countries in the Western hemisphere have pursued PTAs since the early 1990s, countries in East Asia have only recently joined the trend. Second, it rests on shaky assumptions about the economic and political incentives. Finally, it lumps together all PTAs concluded since 1945, despite deep structural changes in the world economy.This paper presents a model of PTA formation and tests its predictions using a Bayesian Monte Carlo Markov Chain model that accounts for spatial and temporal dependencies in the data. The findings point towards important structural breaks: until 1990, countries mostly signed agreements with geographically close and economically similar partners. By contrast, most recent PTAs brings together countries with different factor endowments, suggesting competition between similar and neighboring countries. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is political compliance a precondition for healthy trade relations with China? The Chinese government frequently threatens that meetings between its trading partners' officials and the Dalai Lama will be met with animosity and ultimately harm trade ties with China. We run a gravity model of exports to China from 159 partner countries between 1991 and 2008 to test to which extent bilateral tensions affect trade with autocratic China. In particular, we investigate empirically whether countries that receive the Dalai Lama despite China's opposition experience a significant reduction of their exports to China. In order to account for the potential endogeneity of meetings with the Dalai Lama, the number of Tibet Support Groups and the travel pattern of the Tibetan leader are used as instruments. Our empirical results support the idea that countries officially receiving the Dalai Lama at the highest political level are punished through a reduction of their exports to China. However, this 'Dalai Lama Effect' is only observed for the Hu Jintao era and not for earlier periods. Furthermore, we find that this effect is mainly driven by reduced exports of machinery and transport equipment and that it disappears two years after a meeting took place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growing trade with China offer an array of new exportopportunities for Latin America, yet it also poses new challenges.Heightened demand for raw materials accentuates the need for industrialdiversification, while the new competition environment rais ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most research on trade and conflict continues to focus on whether trade leads to more or less conflict, and/or the inverse relationship, whether conflict has effects on trade flows. We have not, however, examined sufficiently what types of countries become embroiled in bilateral trade disputes, or just as importantly, what are the characteristics of the pairs of countries that become involved in such disagreements. Since the decline of the tariff, bilateral trade policy instruments including antidumping measures, countervailing duties, and technical barriers have become central to many nations trade policy behavior. Yet some nations use these instruments more than others, while other nations seem to be the disproportionate targets of these policies. We have little insight into why there is such variation in who are the participants.To address these important issues, we employ a theoretical approach that integrates both international and domestic explanations. Internationally, we expect that retaliation will affect nations? decisions to initiate trade disputes with other nations. Recent empirical research suggests that a major proportion of trade disputes result from previous disagreements over trade. On the other hand, we anticipate that regional integration will have a negative effect on trade disputes because the corresponding institutional frameworks serve to address issues before they reach the dispute stage. Domestically, we anticipate that characteristics of specific industries greatly shape the disputes that evolve between countries. For example, recent qualitative research illustrates that agricultural and high-tech industries are very adept at steering their national governments into major international disputes on their behalf. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]