An Exclusive Country Club: The Effects of the GATT on Trade, 1950-94

Using data on bilateral trade flows from both before and after World War II, this article examines the impact of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade on trade between its members and on the system of interwar trade blocs. It shows that the distribution of the benefits produced by the GATT was much more highly skewed than conventional wisdom assumes. The article also shows that the gold, Commonwealth, Reichsmark, and exchange-control blocs exerted positive and significant effects on trade after 1945. The authors attribute these effects to the bargaining protocol that governed successive rounds of GATT negotiations, the signature element of the postwar trade regime.