Bearce, David H. and Eldredge, Cody D.  <br/><br/>
A deepening/widening tradeoff? Evidence from the GATT and WTO 

 - Political Research Quarterly   
 - 77(2), Jun, 2024: p.549-561 
<br/><br/> This paper proposes that the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and its successor, the World Trade Organization (WTO), experienced a deepening/widening tradeoff: as their membership increased (greater width), their effectiveness in promoting trade between members/participants declined (lesser de facto depth). This proposition is tested using gravity models of bilateral trade, first separating the GATT and WTO, which are usually combined into a single variable, and then adding a width variable corresponding to each institution. The results show that (1) both regimes were the deepest, or the most trade effective, when they had the fewest member-states and (2) their trade effectiveness declined, eventually becoming statistically insignificant, as more countries joined. As a quantitative case study, this paper provides some of the first evidence consistent with a tradeoff between depth and width within international institutions.- Reproduced <br/><br/>https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/10659129231223163<br/> 
<br/><br/><label>Subjects--Topical Terms: </label><br/>International trade—GATT, International trade—WTO, Trade agreements—Effectiveness, Gravity model—Bilateral trade, Institutional depth—Trade regimes, Institutional width—Membership expansion, Trade liberalization—Multilateral institutions, Global governance—Trade, Membership dynamics—International organizations, Economic integration—GATT/WTO, Trade policy—Quantitative analysis, WTO—Impact of enlargement, GATT—Historical trade effectiveness, International institutions—Tradeoff theory, Multilateral trade negotiations—Outcomes, WTO—Statistical analysis, Trade facilitation—Institutional design, Global trade—Institutional performance, WTO—Membership trends, GATT—Trade modeling