Please join us at GLOBIS for another Friday Forum this Friday, 7 April, from 2:00 to 3:00pm when Dr. Doug Stinnett will present his research entitled, "Accounting for the Depth of Cooperation: The Design of Regional Trade Agreements." A brief abstract follows:
This paper aims to increase our understanding of international cooperation by examining the depth of economic cooperation in regional trade agreements.
The notion that the extent of international cooperation can be either "deep" or "shallow" is recognized, either implicitly or explicitly, in a wide range of international relations scholarship. Despite widespread theoretical recognition, very little research is explicitly focused on explaining this fundamental aspect of international cooperation. In particular, there have been very few studies that account for the depth of cooperation with a systematic empirical analysis. Most empirical studies do not measure it in an appropriate manner, instead treating cooperation as a dichotomous outcome or by measuring depth indirectly. This means that our empirical analyses of cooperation are not directly testing our theories of cooperation. I address this oversight with an empirical analysis of the depth of cooperation in a single issue area: regional trade agreements. Drawing on several existing areas of research, I present a series of hypotheses regarding the depth of
cooperation in regional trade agreements. In particular, I concentrate on the political, economic, and demographic determinants of the demand for regional economic integration. I test these hypotheses using a new data set that directly measures the depth of proposed trade integration in sample of regional trade agreements formed between 1958 and 2002. The findings of this analysis have implications for our understanding of the effects that democratic government, military alliances, regional leadership, and interstate bargaining have on economic cooperation.
In addition, if anyone is interested in presenting a seminar paper, thesis, prospectus, or dissertation to an interested and informed audience in preparation for academic conferences, please contact Regan Damron at the email address or phone number listed below.
GLOBIS is located in historic Franklin House on the corner of Thomas St. and Broad St. at the Northern edge of campus. Please email redamron@uga.edu or call 542-6633 for directions.
Regards,
Regan Damron
Research Associate
Center for the Study of Global Issues (GLOBIS)
School of Public & International Affairs
The University of Georgia
