TY  - JOUR
AU  - Rose,Andrew K.
TI  - Do WTO Members have More Liberal Trade Policy?
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 9347
PY  - 2002
Y2  - November 2002
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9347
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9347.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Andrew K. Rose
Haas School of Business Administration
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-1900
Tel: 510/642-6609
Fax: 510/642-4700
E-Mail: arose@haas.berkeley.edu
AB  - This paper uses 68 measures of trade policy and trade liberalization to ask if membership in theWorld Trade Organization (WTO) and its predecessor the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) is associated with more liberal trade policy. Almost no measures of trade policy are significantly correlated with GATT/WTO membership. Trade liberalizations, when they occur, usually lag GATT entry by many years, and the GATT/WTO often admits countries that are closed and remain closed for years. The exception to the negative rule is that WTO members tend to have slightly more freedom as judged by the Heritage Foundation's index of economic freedom.
ER  -