International trade

International economics

Tariff

Epistemology

Philosophy

Economics

Set (abstract data type)

Programming language

World trade

Computer science

Simple (philosophy)

Journal of Political Economy

This paper examines the extent to which tariff cooperation is observed among World Trade Organization members. With the help of a simple political economy model, we show that tariffs are positively correlated with the importer's market power when they are set noncooperatively but negatively correlated when set cooperatively. We use this prediction to empirically identify the extent of cooperation in the WTO and find that more than three-quarters of WTO members' tariffs are set noncooperatively.

Cooperation in WTO’s Tariff Waters?