2002), “The Economics of the World Trading System

1 Before the late 1990s, a trade economist who wished to delve into research on the theory behind the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) faced significant barriers to entry. First, as research into the GATT/WTO framework has historically been the domain of legal scholars and political scientists, an audience of these researchers was skeptical of any economic “insights. ” For example, the prevailing thought was that application of such truly academic economic concepts as the “terms of trade effect ” to motivate the existence of the GATT/WTO must clearly be misguided; government policymakers surely never refer to such esoteric themes in the midst of real world trade policy negotiations! Second, given that anything that most economists knew about the GATT/WTO would originate from such scholars in other fields, the prevailing opinion even amongst economists was that these institutions derived largely from political considerations and thus lacked any economic basis or foundation. In their joint economic research agenda spanning the last fifteen or so years, Kyl