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This thesis examines how information costs, minimum quality standards and electoral incentives affect international trade and trade policy choice. First, a new pairwise matching model with two-sided information asymmetry is developed to analyse the impact of information costs on endogenous network-building and matching by information intermediaries. The framework innovates by examining the role of information costs on incentives for trade intermediation, thereby endogenising the pattern of direct and indirect trade. The model is extended to analyse the strategic interaction between two information intermediaries who compete in commission rates and network size, giving rise to a fragmented duopoly market structure. Second, unilateral minimum quality standards are endogenously determined as the outcome of a non-cooperative standard-setting game between the governments of two countries. Cross-country externalities from the implementation of minimum quality standards are shown to give rise to a Prisoners' Dilemma structure in the incentives of policy-makers leading to inefficient policy outcomes. The role of minimum quality standards as non-tariff barriers is examined and the scope for mutual gains from reciprocal adjustment in minimum standards analysed. Asymmetric externalities make a cooperative agreement at the world optimum infeasible. Third, a new multi-jurisdictional political agency model is developed to analyse electoral incentives for trade protection in an electoral college. A unique equilibrium is shown to exist where political incumbents build a reputation for protectionism through their policy decisions in their first term of office. A spatial dimension is introduced that shows how trade policy incentives hinge on the distribution of swing voters across decisive, swing states. The empirical analysis augments a benchmark test of the "Protection for Sale" mechanism to include a measure of how industries specialise geographically in swing and decisive states. The findings lend support to the theory.

One of the central preoccupations of international relations scholars is to explain and elaborate the conditions under which international co-operation will occur. In particular, the 'international regimes' literature investigates how states attempt to manage collective action problems such as threats to the global environment. While there has been much progress in our understanding of the conditions required for the formation and maintenance of regimes, the question of regime content - also known as regime properties or institutional design - has been neglected. A second aspect of international co-operation yet to be fully treated is issue linkage. How does one regime - and its provisions - interact with another. The thesis addresses these issues by investigating a specific question: under what conditions will trade restrictive measures be incorporated into a multilateral environmental agreement (MEA). In addition to the regime analysis literature, I draw upon the 'trade and environment' literature on the interaction between trade policy and environmental policy to strengthen the analytical framework. The debate regarding potential conflicts between the rules of the World Trade Organization and the trade measures employed in various MEAs is particularly useful. A review of the contributions and gaps of the relevant literatures provides the basis for selecting four factors - power, costs and benefits, knowledge, and institutional forum - that are used to answer the research question. The use of trade restrictions is examined in the two pre-UNCED MEAs that are most clearly at the intersection of trade and environment: the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer and the 1989 Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes. The thesis then extends the analysis to consider the future of trade restrictive measures in MEAs by applying the conclusions drawn from the two in-depth case studies to two post-UNCED MEAs: the 1998 Rotterdam Convention for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade and the planned Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety. It is found that while power, costs and benefits, and institutional forum contribute in different degrees to understanding the factors influencing regime content, traditional knowledge-based regime analysis approaches fail to do so. Thus, a broader approach to examining the role of knowledge - analysing the influence of the Dominant Social Paradigm - is employed and demonstrated to have strong explanatory power.

The number of regional trade agreements (RTAs) has risen sharply in the past decade. This has resulted in a new global trade landscape where a great proportion of trade is carried through preferential arrangements rather than on a most-favoured-nation basis. This prompts concerns over how such trade agreements should be managed. Importantly, developing countries are increasingly taking part in the current RTA proliferation. This thesis therefore sets out to identify the challenges facing developing countries when they negotiate and form such trade arrangements with their developed-country trade partners and among themselves, and seeks to deal with these challenges through the WTO rules and mechanisms pertaining RTA supervision. To do so, the thesis first surveys the general trends and characteristics of the current RTA proliferation, and examines three bodies of literature, which are supplemented with the author's personal participation in RTA negotiations and interviews with trade negotiators, in order to identify the challenges facing developing countries. It then evaluates the WTO rules governing the formation of an RTA, namely, GATT Article XXIV, the Enabling Clause, and GATS Article V. It is argued that these rules are problematic and inadequate to deal with the challenges. In response, the thesis proposes a variety of interpretative solutions. Lastly, acknowledging the practicality of the proposed substantive reforms, the thesis explores whether there are other less contentious means that may complement and strengthen the existing WTO rules and mechanisms with regard to RTA supervision. These include promulgation of code of best practices, revision of the WTO surveillance mechanism, and technical assistance for developing countries in relation to RTAs.