On the Relationship between Preferential and Multilateral Trade Liberalization: The Case of Customs Unions
比较了双边主义和多边主义两种贸易自由化博弈的均衡结果，发现对称禀赋下全球自由贸易是唯一稳定均衡，不对称禀赋下关税同盟可能促进或阻碍多边自由化。
This paper compares equilibrium outcomes of two games of trade liberalization. In the Bilateralism game, countries choose whether to liberalize trade preferentially via a customs union (CU), multilaterally, or not at all. The Multilateralism game is a restricted version of the Bilateralism game in that countries cannot form CUs and can only undertake non-discriminatory trade liberalization. When countries have symmetric endowments, global free trade is the only stable equilibrium of both games. Allowing for endowment asymmetry, we isolate circumstances where the option to form CUs helps further the cause of multilateral liberalization as well as where it does not.