(iPoster) Deals to Be Determined: The Trade Bargaining Dataset, 1980-2025

• In Event: Poster Session: New Directions in International Political Economy

Abstract

Trade negotiations have become an increasingly salient feature of global politics. Prominent political discourse may give the impression that trade negotiations routinely conclude formal agreements. However, real-world observations suggest otherwise: many negotiations stall or fail to produce an agreement. Although political scientists and economists have generated valuable findings and datasets on preferential trade agreements (PTAs), scholars still lack systematic data to study the life cycle of trade negotiations. In particular, despite extensive theoretical discussion, we have limited empirical evidence on how countries select potential partners and initiate trade negotiations. Moreover, because the negotiation process leading to PTAs remains understudied, we lack systematic knowledge of the factors that drive negotiation success or failure. To address these gaps, I introduce the Trade Bargaining Dataset (TBD), which captures the evolution of trade negotiations over time.
The TBD includes 539 PTA negotiations involving 89 countries across the Indo-Pacific, the Americas, and Europe, with temporal coverage from 1980 to 2025. Of the 472 negotiations that were initiated, 67 percent resulted in signed agreements, 21 percent were discontinued, and 12 percent remain deals to be determined. Negotiations that conclude with PTAs take an average of 2.16 years to complete, whereas unsuccessful negotiations often persist for more than a decade without resolution. In addition, PTAs that successfully go through the ratification process take about 1.14 years, while some may not enter into force eventually. These substantial variations highlight the potential of the TBD to open new research agendas on international cooperation, diplomacy, and the interaction between domestic politics and foreign policy.
To illustrate the value of the dataset, this paper revisits a central question in international political economy: Do PTAs promote peace? Drawing on commercial peace theory, prior studies find that PTAs are associated with a reduced likelihood of conflict. However, if states are unlikely to enter trade negotiations with adversaries in the first place, the pacifying effects attributed to PTAs may emerge earlier in the negotiation process. I leverage data on negotiation initiation and outcomes to address the partner selection problem in the existing literature. The results show that alliance ties and diplomatic relations strongly predict the initiation of PTA negotiations, but they do not affect the likelihood of reaching an agreement. Moreover, negotiating dyads are unlikely to experience conflict regardless of whether negotiations end in PTAs. These findings suggest that international engagement through repeated bargaining generates pacifying effects that precede formal agreement, while the conclusion of PTAs further consolidates these effects.

Author

• Huei-Jyun Ye, Wabash College