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Preferential trade agreements (PTAs) increasingly include environmental provisions. While the existing literature documents these provisions' environmental impacts, this paper sheds light on their relation with aid flows. Using an event-specification and data on bilateral Official Development Assistance (ODA) commitments for a sample of 147 developing country recipients in the period from 2002 to 2017, we find evidence that the number of environmental provisions in PTAs is positively associated with aid during negotiation phases. With high-income countries typically pre-determining the extent of environmental provisions in their upcoming PTAs, this suggests that aid serves as a side-payment for recipients to sweeten the pot and agree upon already formulated PTA content. While both aggregate ODA and its subcomponent environmental aid a priori qualify as candidates for pre-signature side-payments, we find that only the former fulfills this expectation, presumably reflecting more leeway to exploit aid fungibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a diversification explanation in order understand the development of PTAs in Southeast Asia. I argue that an important reason why ASEAN states participate in PTAs has been to diversify existing trade ties and to reduce overdependence on a narrow range of export markets. Southeast Asian countries have formed PTAs with markets with which they had weak or unexplored economic relations, as demonstrated by three case analyses: the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA), the ASEAN-China Free Trade Agreement (ACFTA) and the ASEAN-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (AJCEP). To maximise the economic gains and the diversification effects of PTA participation, ASEAN countries have pursued a strategy of strengthening economic unity while keeping external economic linkages as diversified as possible. Although East Asia, and especially China, was an important alternative market to reduce ASEAN's dependence on trade with America, ASEAN countries have also pursued PTAs with a number of other trading partners. This paper explains how PTAs have helped ASEAN states to develop more policy autonomy in their trading environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper asks: why do Canadians oppose trade deals with Asian countries but support them with Europe? While many Canadians view Asia's economically dynamic countries as important to Canada's future prosperity, they are hesitant to formalize ties with the same type of trade agreements they are willing to offer traditional trading partners. Using polls conducted by the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, this paper identifies the demographic and attitudinal basis for the “trade support gap.” It finds that the gap is driven by factors that go beyond economic interest. Canadians prefer to strengthen economic ties with democratic countries that have strong human rights records. Furthermore, those who are worried that foreign control of the economy threatens national security and those who prefer ties with traditional allies are likely to support trade with the EU but not with Asian and other non-Asian emerging economies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Does the factor endowment (FE) of trade partners influence mass support for free trade agreements (FTAs), and if so, how? Preference models based on factor endowment expect that individual attitudes toward trade partners should systematically vary by factors of endowment and respondents' skill level. This paper provides the first systematic examination of the effect of trade partner's FE on mass support for FTAs. Using a conjoint analysis design on a sample of respondents from developed and developing economies (the US and India), the findings show that respondents consistently favour trade partners with a highly educated workforce and a higher level of gross domestic product per capita. Moreover, preferences for these country attributes hold regardless of respondents' skill level or their country's FE. Data from a nationally representative survey on Canadian trade preferences offer additional corroborating evidence. Together, the findings offer limited support for economic preferences derived from factor endowment trade models, indicating that individuals, within and across countries, may share a common bias against trade with lesser-developed states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following trade agreements between ASEAN states, the expansion of cross-border roads and bridges between Laos and Thailand has linked local communities and distant markets in increasingly diverse ways. Although the planned impacts of such integration are expected to be beneficial, effects on the ground vary, as witnessed at a sleepy outpost in Xayabury and a more vibrant crossing in Savannakhet. This paper discusses first the physical setting of such border facilities, and then explores their actual local effects on traders' activities, highlighting changes in gender roles and perceptions of entrepreneurial competition participated in by women in the two research sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The agreement on agriculture and the World Trade Organization were major outcomes of the 1986-1994 Uruguay Round (UR) negotiations within the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The measures under the UR were predicted to increase poverty in developing countries, a serious cause for concern since poverty alleviation is a major goal of developing countries. Thus this paper simulated the impact on poverty of the UR for a net food importing country, Trinidad and Tobago.Objective: The objectives of the study were to determine the changes in poverty levels in Trinidad and Tobago that we expected would result from changes in the price levels of food commodities after the removal of trade protection following the UR, and to examine recent trends in poverty in Trinidad and Tobago and the prices of major agricultural exports from the United States, its principal trading partner.Methods: A regression model (poverty model) was used to determine the relationship between poverty levels and the prices of sensitive imported food commodities (SIFCs) and other key economic variables. Impact models were used to project changes in world market prices of the SIFCs due to the UR, and these price changes were used to predict changes in poverty in Trinidad and Tobago.Results: The results showed a positive elasticity between poverty and the prices of SIFCs. The study also predicted that the average projected increase in price levels of the SIFCs of less than 9% by the year 2000 would cause an increase in poverty in Trinidad and Tobago of less than 4%.Conclusions: There has been, in fact, a small decline in poverty in Trinidad and Tobago since 1996. The prices of major agricultural exports from the United States have also been falling since 1995. Thus, so far the UR has had no perceptible effects in increasing the prices of food exports from the United States. Also, so far the UR has had no perceptible effect on the poverty level in Trinidad and Tobago. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Domestic debates about trade have increased the salience of international economic cooperation among the public, raising the question of whether, and how, domestic support can be rallied in support of international trade agreements. We argue that institutional features of trade agreements provide important cues to domestic audiences that shape support, particularly the membership composition and voting rules for multilateral deals. We use two survey experiments to show that the US public is more supportive of trade when it is negotiated with like-minded countries. We also find that the voting rules shape support for trade agreements, but differently across partisan audiences. Republican voters strongly favor the home country having veto power, whereas Democrats prefer agreements with equal voting rules. These differences are largely driven by perceptions of the agreement's benefit for the nation and the public's trust of the negotiators and perceived fairness of the rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canadian provinces and territories have gained increasing relevance in matters of international trade over the last several decades. The possibility of a Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, however, marks the first time that sub-federal governments in Canada have been directly involved in specific areas of negotiations. The significance of this development, examined in this series of policy papers, can be organized under five overarching themes: 1) the negotiation, ratification, and implementation of foreign trade agreements; 2) the need to distinguish between process activity and actual policy outcomes; 3) the ongoing relevance of Canadian federalism; 4) the impact of non-governmental actors, especially civil society; and 5) the differing interpretations of academics, practitioners, business, and societal groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analysis various trade indicators, such as the export similarity index, the intra-industry trade index, and revealed comparative advantage to examine whether the Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) free trade agreement (AFTA) has created or diverted trade from Thailand. According to gravity model analysis, there is a high degree of similarity between trade structure of Thailand and AFTA. The results indicate that Thailand can increase its trade gains by trading with ASEAN countries.

This article reviews theory and research on the expected impact and observed effect to date of the liberalization of international trade in the Americas on industrial relations. The effect of the movement toward freer trade both on the parties of interest and on research and teaching in the field are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past two decades, states and cities implemented low-carbon energy development, renewable portfolio standards, demand-side management (DSM), renewable energy production incentives, green building requirements, regional carbon trading agreements, and other energy-based economic development initiatives. Yet the dearth of state-level and substate-level models makes it difficult to predict the effects of such actions. This article addresses this shortcoming by presenting the performance results of the new Indiana Scalable Economy and Energy Model (IN-SEEM)—a model utilizing a dynamic, simultaneous equations framework—and demonstrates the model's capabilities with an analysis of electricity price increases from a DSM program in the state of Indiana. Overall performance of the model is strong, with high adjusted R 2 values and low mean absolute percent errors for most of 30 endogenous variables. A DSM price increase analysis finds variation in impact across the state's 10 major economic sectors and small changes in energy consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proliferation of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) and the wave of democratization are among the most significant developments in international relations during the past three decades. The correlation between these is well noted. The causal link between these phenomena, however, remains unclear. On one hand, democracies have been found to be more likely to join PTAs. On the other hand, trade agreements should foster democratization because they undermine the ability of governments to distribute rents to maintain an autocratic regime. If PTAs and democracy coevolve through a selection and a contagion effect, then conventional statistical techniques can produce wholly misleading results. This article presents a new approach based on recent advancements in longitudinal network analysis. Our findings confirm that historically, democratization indeed made states more likely to sign PTAs, but that trade agreements also encourage the democratization of a country, in particular if the PTA partners are themselves democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proliferation of bilateral and regional trade agreements has arguably been the main change to the international trading system since the end of the Uruguay Round in the mid-1990s. We argue that investment discrimination plays a major role in this development. Preferential trade agreements can lead to investment discrimination because of tariff differentials on intermediary products and as a result of provisions that relax investment rules for the parties to the agreement. Excluded countries are sensitive to the costs that this investment discrimination imposes on domestic firms and react by signing a trade agreement that aims at leveling the playing field. We test our argument using a spatial econometric model and a newly compiled data set that includes 166 countries and covers a period of eighteen years (1990–2007). Our findings strongly support the argument that investment discrimination is a major driver of the proliferation of trade agreements. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The sense of mystery around Chinese presences in Angola impels researchers to understand not only the empirical details of economic transactions and diplomatic partnerships but also the various ways in which the actors involved make sense of a novel social, political, and economic configuration. By drawing several ethnographic portraits of the social practices and discursive strategies at play in Chinese-Angolan relations, I show how, in a context of mutual uncertainty and suspicion, appeals to "security" play a central role. Instead of viewing Chinese and Angolans as two separate groups with opposed interests and lack of communication between them, I explore how participation in a shared context generates common modes of explanation. Moreover, I propose a parallel analysis of state-level negotiations alongside everyday social encounters to consider how a political economic partnership between China and Angola is lived through the everyday negotiations of Chinese and Angolan residents in Luanda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the implications of the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Agriculture for the right to food in the global South. In a context in which a worldwide backlash has developed against the World Trade Organization (WTO), the politics of the Doha Round negotiations are analyzed from a food rights perspective. It is argued that since 2004 attention in the WTO has shifted from overarching human rights concerns toward a focus on technical detail constraining developing countries from acting to respect, protect, and fulfill the right to food. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Preferential trade agreements (PTAs) have increased dramatically in the past several decades and play an important role in the global economy. Dispute settlement mechanisms (DSMs) in these international agreements significantly influence their functioning. In this article, the authors seek to understand what factors determine the legal arrangements of these mechanisms. The authors argue that the confluence of domestic political regime type, emulation incentives, and the development of the multilateral trade regime determines their legal dimension. Using a data set of PTAs between 1957 and 2008, the authors show that (1) democracies are more likely than autocracies to prefer moderately strict DSMs, (2) trading partners increasingly emulate each other by adopting similar legal templates, and (3) the recent trend against legalistic mechanisms is largely driven by the development of the multilateral trade regime. Their findings have important implications for the design of international institutions by highlighting the importance of member-specific as well as macro-level factors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Bilateral trade agreements have proliferated rapidly within the last two decades, growing into a dense network of multiple ties between countries. The spread of preferential trade agreements (PTAs), however, is not uniform: some countries have signed a multitude of deals, while others remain much less involved. This article presents a longitudinal network analysis method to analyze the patterns of the formation of trade agreements, based on the mutual codetermination of network structure and agreement formation. The findings suggest that PTAs spread endogenously because of structural arbitrage effects in the network, and that they establish a hierarchy among countries. Rich countries form ties with each other and middle-income countries, who themselves create a horizontal layer of PTAs, but least-developed countries are left behind and do not form many ties. Supplanting the multilateral trade regime with preferential agreements therefore creates a system of highly asymmetrical relationships of weaker spokes around a few hubs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Public health responses to emerging infectious disease (EID) rarely try to interrupt the mobility of goods and information. Rather, designed under the rubric of ‘‘public health security,’’ they extend the rationale of free circulation through efforts to intensify movement and communication between international agencies, national health (and defence) departments, and the pharmaceutical industry. In this way, public health security extends postliberal modes of transnational regulation. This article examines an unfolding scenario which is testing public health’s fidelity to the ethos of international trade agreements: Indonesia has withdrawn from the World Health Organization’s (WHO) ‘‘virus-sharing’’ scheme because WHO has facilitated the use of Indonesian samples of H5N1 for the commercial development of potentially profitable vaccines without consultation with the Indonesian labs in which they originated. It has been argued that the Indonesian move is one that contests the current securitization of global health. However, I argue that what we are witnessing is the process of emergence of a distinct form of biological sovereignty in the form of rival global health security aggregates, each working to inject a new form of postliberal sovereignty into the field of global public health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Has the growing pro-environment rhetoric in ASEAN-China relations resulted in the effective mainstreaming of environmental issue into trade agreements and multilateral cooperation frameworks? The article discusses the cases of the ASEAN China Free Trade Area (ACFTA) and the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) and argues that there is no shortage of national and regional policy agendas that visibly link trade growth and environmental considerations. However, this nexus is still a weak one in terms of implementation and effectiveness. The most promising initiatives towards an effective reconciliation of trade growth and environmental sustainability are promoted and often driven by foreign donors, most prominently the European Union (EU). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of this article is to question the hypothesis of the role of transport infrastructures in regional economic growth by comparing Central Eastern Europe (supported by the EU structural and cohesion funds) and the Greater Mekong Subregion (mainly supported by the "economic corridors" of the ADB). Three main components of trade efficiency are scrutinized and compared: (1) the historical development of trade agreements, (2) the supra-national (regional) capacity of trade regulation, and (3) the micro level of governance between the different actors involved in trade. The comparison between CEE and the GMS is all the more warranted because of two paradoxes that need to be explained: The first one results from the existing link between transport and growth in the case of the GMS, and the lack of a link in the case of CEE. The second paradox insists on the fact that despite their very different institutional frameworks, both subregions continue to face similar challenges concerning the implementation of trade agreements and the exchange of facilities at the local level – pointing towards the issue of governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article investigates different conditions under which Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are planning to carry a series ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) agreements to move forward in their motive to attain regional economic integration. A literature review of the term economic integration and a discussion on integration theories and their weaknesses in explaining the AFTA case are given. Robert D. Putnam's two-level-games model analysis is used to analyze how ASEAN states reached the AFTA.

Does the dramatic rise of the number of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) worldwide make economic sanctions more likely through increasing the leverage of the powerful and pitting states against each other in competition (power) or less likely through increasing the benefits of trade, resolving disputes, and promoting like-minded communities (plenty)? The authors offer the first systematic test of these propositions, testing hypotheses on sanctions onset using a data set of episodes from 1947 through 2000. In favor of the plenty argument, increases in bilateral trade do decrease sanctioning behavior; in favor of the power argument, an increase in the potential sanctioner's GDP or centrality in the network of all PTAs make sanctioning much more likely. However, mutual membership in PTAs has no direct effect on the propensity of states to sanction each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Use of quasi-markets for provision of public goods requires clear property rights, a predictable adjudication process, and low transaction costs. These may be undermined by new restrictions on government action found in the new generation of free trade agreements. These trade agreements privilege foreign over domestic investors, replace public courts with private arbitration, supplant traditional standards for legislation by requirements to be "least trade restrictive," and forward a new definition of "takings" that requires governmental compensation for lost potential profits from regulatory action. These features undermine the governance structure necessary to reduce transaction costs of delivering complex public services through private contracts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article questions the widely held view that indigenous movements in Latin America during the last decades of the twentieth century were caused by globalization. The author reviews several bodies of literature and concludes that, although globalization may be a fit descriptor for some of the actions and narratives of indigenous movements, it cannot be understood as a causal determinant. Many indigenous movements emerged long before the neoliberal current started, others coincide with it, and yet others lag significantly. The author proposes an alternative framework that gives primary significance to state-society relations. Contrary to the idea that national states may have lost prominence in the age of globalization I contend the opposite, suggesting also that indigenous movements have emerged where there are (1) challenges to preexisting corporate identities, (2) transcommunity networks to provide the resources for mobilization, and (3) associational spaces to facilitate collective expression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Firm-hosted commercial online communities, in which customers interact to solve each other's service problems, represent a fascinating context to study the motivations of collective action in the form of knowledge contribution to the community. We extend a model of social capital based on Wasko and Faraj (2005) to incorporate and contrast the direct impact of commitment to both the online community and the host firm, as well as reciprocity, on quality and quantity of knowledge contribution. In addition, we examine the moderating influence of three individual attributes that are particularly relevant to the firm-hosted community context: perceived informational value, sportsmanship, and online interaction propensity. We empirically test our framework using self-reported and objective data from 203 members of a firm-hosted technical support community. In addition to several interesting moderating effects, we find that a customer's online interaction propensity, commitment to the community, and the informational value s/he perceives in the community are the strongest drivers of knowledge contribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the effect of interstate signals on the probability of civil war onset. Using a bargaining framework, the author argues that costly signals should have no effect on the likelihood that a civil war begins because they allow the government and opposition to peacefully adjust their bargaining positions to avoid the costs of fighting. In contrast, cheap signals can disrupt intrastate negotiations, which makes conflict more likely by increasing the likelihood that one of the competing parties will make excessive demands. This argument is tested using measures for sanctions, troop mobilization, alliances, and trade ties as indicators for costly signals, as well as events data as measures for cheap signals. Results demonstrate that cheap signals strongly affect the probability of civil war onset, while costly signals do not. Cheap signals hostile to the government increase the likelihood of civil war onset, while cheap supportive signals have a pacifying effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article distinguishes three categories of hope: private, collective, and public. Public hope is hope that is invoked by political actors in relation to a societal goal of some kind. The article argues that public hope is the most dangerous kind of hope. The argument is developed using the recent history of trade negotiations between the United States and developing countries concerning intellectual property rights as they relate to life-saving medicines for AIDS. Public hope may allow political actors to harness emotionally collectivities to economic and social agendas that are poorly understood by those collectivities and that are ultimately destructive of the social institutions upon which actual private and collective hopes depend. Or public hope may be secret hope that drives policies that escape public notice until it is too late. The final section of the article identifies four principles that help to make public hope a contingent force for the good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the economic impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) upon Western New York (WNY). A variety of theoretical perspectives are reviewed, notably impact assessment. Evidence from a survey of local industrial firms suggests that NAFTA has not played an especially important role in the various upswings and downswings that have affected the WNY area in the 1990s. In contrast to a number of inquiries that have appeared in the recent literature, the authors find little evidence to support the view that WNY has been negatively impacted by NAFTA. Instead, the authors' evidence suggests that NAFTA has had a positive impact in terms of new export development, job creation, input sourcing, and sales growth. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the empirical and theoretical difficulties that confront researchers who wish to explore the effects of trade agreements upon regional economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the final resolution of the so-called Uruguay round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Such is the time-lag attached to the international policy stage, however, that the losers from the 1993 resolution, those countries from the South who are dependent upon international markets for the sale of their primary commodities, are still awaiting the full consequences of this official organisation of inequality. The resolution of the last round of the GATT leads a series of policy developments that affect the future of the Caribbean sugar industry; in conjuncture with the local circumstances of production that are the legacy of the industry's colonial past, this constitutes a crisis of unprecedented proportions. The Caribbean sugar industry developed in tandem with Europe's increasing desire for dietary sweetness. Despite its decline, however, the sugar industry continues to be the economic mainstay of significant parts of the island's rural areas. And, although its importance to the national economy has declined, it remains the third largest contributor to GNP and, as the island's chief agricultural export, the largest employer of rural labour.

Elections affect both the probability of successful ratification and the terms of international trade agreements; domestic politics in its simplest form shapes international negotiations. Without elections, the extent of protection in a trade agreement increases with the degree of divided government, and the Schelling conjecture--whereby an international negotiator can point to a hawkish legislature to extract greater concessions from the foreign country-holds only when the legislature is not too hawkish. An election (where the executive anticipates the preferences of the legislature imperfectly) implies that when divisions in government rise, the probability of ratification failure increases, the expected outcome becomes more protectionist, and the executive's influence vis-à-vis the foreign country declines, thus challenging the Schelling conjecture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a replication of Richardson, Kegley, and Agnew's cross-national study focusing on symmetry and reciprocity as characteristics of dyadic foreign policy behavior. Our study applied similar scaling (WEIS) and statistical techniques to analyze the dyadic relations of a single country, South Africa. Both studies produced much in common, that is, the degree of quantitative symmetry in the most active dyads is rather evenly spread from high to low; and affective compatibility is very common with respect to the direction (cooperation or conflictive) of bilateral foreign policy behavior. However, intensity of affect is very seldom reciprocal. The differences in the two studies were that symmetry and reciprocity were more significantly related for the single-country dyads than those of the cross-national study; and nonreciprocal affective intensity characterizes cooperative relations more generally than it does conflictive relations in the cross-national study. For South African dyads this was not the case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an evolutionary cooperative approach to conflict resolution that would lower the fears and raise the hopes of parties in conflict by proceeding incrementally in phases that would allow interaction and reciprocity, learning, and flexibility (through options to expand or abandon cooperation/integration). With reference to the Cyprus conflict, although initially maintaining two separate decentralized zones, the simultaneous creation of a third, joint federated area to serve as the nucleus of a cooperative, interactive, centralized federation is proposed. A "conciliation stage" should precede a federated structure 'testing" phase, before expanding and ratifying full-scale implementation contingent on successful interim cohabitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the effects of the strategies used by others on the cooperative behavior of an individual. In computer simulation studies of the prisoner's dilemma conducted by R. Axelrod, the tit-for-tat (TFT) strategy was found to be most effective. Two important properties of the TFT strategy are based on the reciprocity norm: It is "provocable" and immediately retaliates if the other person defects; it is "forgiving" and immediately reciprocates cooperation if the other returns to cooperation after defection. A social dilemma is a situation in which two or more individuals receive a higher payoff for a competitive choice than for a cooperative choice, no matter what the other members choose, but all members are better off if all cooperate than if all compete. Behavior in social dilemmas is an important research problem because it is a prototype of many real- life problems facing society, for example environmental pollution, overpopulation and resource depletion. In one of the classic studies of the PDG, Axelrod conducted a computer tournament to determine the effectiveness of various strategies. Computer programs to play the PDG were submitted by expert game theorists from a variety of disciplines and each program was pitted against each of the others over 200 trials.

The manner in which the concept of reciprocity is implicated in functional theory is explored, enabling a reanalysis of the concepts of "survival" and "exploitation." The need to distinguish between the concepts of complementarity and reciprocity is stressed. Distinctions are also drawn between (1) reciprocity as a pattern of mutually contingent exchange of gratifications, (2) the existential or folk belief in reciprocity, and (3) the generalized moral norm of reciprocity. Reciprocity as a moral norm is analyzed; it is hypothesized that it is one of the universal "principal components" of moral codes. As Westermarck states, "To requite a benefit, or to be grateful to him who bestows it, is probably everywhere, at least under certain circumstances, regarded as a duty. This is a subject which in the resent connection calls for special consideration." Ways in which the norm of reciprocity is implicated in the maintenance of stable social systems are examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]