EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

The Role of Dispute Settlement Procedures in International Trade Agreements

Giovanni Maggi and Robert W. Staiger

The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2011, vol. 126, issue 1, 475-515

Abstract: Although disputes are typically treated as synonymous with concerns about enforcement in economic models of trade agreements, in reality most WTO disputes seem to concern the interpretation of vague provisions, or instances where the agreement is silent. And some have suggested that the WTO's Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) could usefully grant exceptions to rigid contractual obligations. These activist DSB roles could help "complete" an incomplete contract. But how activist should the DSB be? Should DSB rulings set precedent? We address these questions by characterizing the optimal choice of contract form and DSB mandate under various contracting conditions. JEL Codes: D02, D78, D86, F13, K12, K33. Copyright 2011, Oxford University Press.

Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (57)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/qje/qjq005 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:oup:qjecon:v:126:y:2011:i:1:p:475-515

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics is currently edited by Robert J. Barro, Lawrence F. Katz, Nathan Nunn, Andrei Shleifer and Stefanie Stantcheva

More articles in The Quarterly Journal of Economics from President and Fellows of Harvard College
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-24
Handle: RePEc:oup:qjecon:v:126:y:2011:i:1:p:475-515