The Design and Impacts of Preferential Trade Agreements

This panel investigates the drivers and impacts of preferential trade agreements (PTAs). The panelists seek to understand the institutional design and implementation of trade agreements via quantitative methods.
At the end of drivers, Sojun Park finds that manufacturers of longer product life cycles will lobby for free trade agreements by examining patent citations and lobbying reports.
Matthew Castle examines the evolution of agreement during the negotiation process. By comparing the drafts and final texts, he finds that the EU has been successful in injecting its preferences into the agreement design.
At the end of impacts, Giuseppe Peressotti focuses on non-trade issues (NTI) in PTAs and argues that signatories’ domestic institutions determine how the intellectual property rights (IPR) clauses facilitate innovation.
Also in the vein of NTI, Leopoldo Biffi explains the establishment of PTAs’ joint implementation bodies and contends that the monitoring power of such bodies may extend beyond treaty provisions if the regulations are salient to voters and interest groups.
Finally, by tracing the negotiation process, Heui-Jyun Ye presents a novel Trade Bargaining Dataset that allows researchers to re-visit the drivers and impacts of PTAs.
This panel features nuanced understandings of PTAs and offers insights into trade policymaking.