The intellectual origins of WTO: Hull’s and Bidwell’s views on organizing the international trade

Claude Schwob

Working Papers of BETA from Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg

Abstract: Unlike the monetary and financial international organizations which where born during World War II and in the immediate post-war years, the WTO was created only in 1994. The GATT negotiated in 1947 was initially conceived as a temporary agreement while waiting for the creation of an International Trade Organization, which was finally never created. Nevertheless as like as in financial matters, some thinkers have built projects on such an organization before and during World War II. Among them there are two Americans: Cordell Hull and Percy Wells Bidwell. This paper compares both projects and investigates whether it can be said that Hull was the spiritual father of the WTO as some of the Cordell Hull Institute papers claim it.

Keywords: Theory of International Organizations; Bilateralism; Multilateralism; History of International Organizations; International Trade Negotiations; International Trade Organization; World Trade Organization. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B10 B20 F02 F13 F53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-hpe
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://beta.u-strasbg.fr/WP/2009/2009-32.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ulp:sbbeta:2009-32

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers of BETA from Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).