Are Preferential Trade Agreements with Non-trade Objectives a Stumbling Block for Multilateral Liberalization?
构建模型分析包含劳工、环境等非贸易合作的区域贸易协定如何阻碍全球自由贸易，发现多边关税削减会削弱此类协定的威胁力，从而增加全球自由化成本，并提供了计量证据支持。
In many preferential trade agreements (PTAs), countries exchange not only reductions in trade barriers but also cooperation in non-trade issues such as labour and environmental standards, intellectual property, etc. We provide a model of PTAs motivated by cooperation in non-trade issues and analyse its implications for global free trade and welfare. We find that such PTAs increase the cost of multilateral tariff reductions and thus cause a stumbling block to global free trade. This occurs because multilateral tariff reductions decrease the threat that can be used in PTAs and thus the surplus that can be extracted from them. By explicitly modelling the interaction between preferential and multilateral negotiations, we derive a testable prediction and provide novel econometric evidence that supports the model's key prediction. The welfare analysis shows that the current World Trade Organization rules allowing this type of PTAs may be optimal for economically large countries, thus the model can predict the rules we observe. We also analyse alternative rules that constitute a Pareto improvement. Copyright 2007, Wiley-Blackwell.