Welfare and integration

This article argues that the terms-of-trade and volume-of-trade taxonomy from the theory of tariffs constitutes an attractive alternative to Viner's trade diversion and creation effects for the analysis of preferential trading arrangements. In applications of the alternative approach, the article establishes that results by Lipsey and Riezman on large versus small preunion trade flows for choice of partners are not "contradictory" and that under some conditions a small country's optimal strategy is to seek membership of multiple free-trade areas.