On the emergence of an MFN club: equal treatment in an unequal world

Kamal Saggi () and Faruk Sengul

Chapter 4 in Economic Analysis of the Rules and Regulations of the World Trade Organization, 2018, pp 76-108 from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.

Abstract: Motivated by GATT, we endogenize the formation of a club whose members have to abide by the MFN principle of non-discrimination. The underlying model is that of oligopolistic intraindustry trade. While an MFN club does not alter average tariff levels across countries, it increases aggregate world welfare; makes non-members worse off; and can immiserize its high cost members. These results imply that (i) core WTO rules such as MFN are valuable even if multilateral negotiations deliver limited trade liberalization and (ii) the distributional effects of MFN maybe one reason why developing countries have been granted Special and Differential treatment at the WTO.

Keywords: Multilateral Trading System; Trade Agreements; Trade Liberalization; International Tariff Cooperation; WTO Disputes; Case Studies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/pdf/10.1142/9789813233058_0004 (application/pdf)
https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/9789813233058_0004 (text/html)
Ebook Access is available upon purchase.

Related works:
Journal Article: On the emergence of an MFN club: equal treatment in an unequal world (2009)
Journal Article: On the emergence of an MFN club: equal treatment in an unequal world (2009)
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:wsi:wschap:9789813233058_0004

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in World Scientific Book Chapters from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tai Tone Lim ().