Organiser: Bernard Hoekman | European University Institute

Speaker: Robert Staiger | Dartmouth College

Over the WTO years, the frequency of disputes and court rulings has trended downwards. Such trends are sometimes interpreted as symptoms of a dispute resolution system in decline. In this lecture, Prof. Staiger proposed a theory that can explain these trends as a result of judicial learning; thus according to this theory such trends represent good news, not bad news. He then explored whether the predictions of his model are consistent with WTO trade dispute data, and took a first step towards estimating the strength and scope of court learning.