Trade Cooperation: The Purpose, Design and Effects of Preferential Trade Agreements

by Andreas Dür (Editor), Manfred Elsig (Editor)

Preferential trade agreements (PTAs) have been proliferating for more than two decades, with the negotiations for a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and a Trans-Pacific Partnership being just the tip of the iceberg. This volume addresses some of the most pressing issues related to the surge of these agreements. It includes chapters written by leading political scientists, economists and lawyers which theoretically and empirically advance our understanding of trade agreements. The key theme is that PTAs vary widely in terms of design. The authors provide explanations as to why we see these differences in design and whether and how these differences matter in practice. The tools for understanding the purposes and effects of PTAs that are offered will guide future research and inform practitioners and trade policy experts about progress in the scientific enquiry into PTAs.

628 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2014

About the author

Andreas Dür is Professor of International Politics at the Department of Political Science and Sociology at the University of Salzburg, Austria. He holds a PhD from the European University Institute in Florence (2004). Prior to taking up his current position, he was a research fellow at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research(2003-2005) and a lecturer at University College Dublin (2005-2009). Dür has published more than 40 peer-reviewed articles on trade policy, interest group politics and European integration in journals such as the British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, the European Journal of Political Research, International Studies Quarterly, the Journal of Common Market Studies, and the Journal of European Public Policy. Among his publications are also Insiders versus Outsiders: Interest Group Politics in Multilevel Europe (Oxford University Press, 2016) and Protection for Exporters: Discrimination and Power in Transatlantic Trade Relations, 1930-2010 (Cornell University Press, 2010). He is co-editor of Trade Cooperation: The Purpose, Design and Effects of Preferential Trade Agreements (Cambridge University Press, 2015).