Abstract
The success of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)/World Trade Organization (WTO) as an international institution is widely acknowledged. Among multilateral institutions, the GATT/WTO has adopted a distinctive approach as a forum for international negotiation, based on reciprocal negotiations (over market access) that occur on a voluntary basis between pairs of countries or among small numbers of countries; the results of these bilateral negotiations are then ‘multilateralized’ to the full GATT/WTO membership under the GATT/WTO principle of non-discrimination. This article describes how recent economic research has attempted to understand and interpret these key design features of the GATT/ WTO.
This chapter was originally published in The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, 2nd edition, 2008. Edited by Steven N. Durlauf and Lawrence E. Blume
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Staiger, R.W. (2008). World Trade Organization. In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95121-5_2050-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95121-5_2050-1
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Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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