“…Early works on the welfare effects of RTAs and customs unions, in particular, such as Viner (1950), Meade (1955), Lipsey (1960), Johnson (1965), Mundell (1964), Corden (1972), and Kemp and Wan (1976), essentially reached both conclusions. In more recent studies, Deardorff and Stem (1994), Baldwin (1993Baldwin ( , 2006, Wei and Frankel (1995), Bergsten (1995), Frankel, Stein, and Wei (1997), Ethier (1998), Cadot et al (2001), Freund (2000), and Ornelas (2005), and, on the political science side, Oye (1992) and Kahler (1995) provide grounds for believing that RTAs can be ever expanding and propel strategic interactions conducive to global free trade.…”