The Purpose of Trade Agreements
Abstract
In this chapter, I review the literature on governments’ motivations for negotiating and joining international
trade agreements. I discuss both normative explanations for trade agreements and explanations
based on political-economy concerns. Most of the chapter focuses on the purpose of multilateral
agreements, but I do discuss briefly the reasons we might see governments forming preferential or
regional trade agreements that exclude some countries.
Description
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Keywords
Trade agreements,Trade pacts,International cooperation,Multilateralism,Regionalism