This paper tackles the question of trade strategy and differential economic performance in Latin America, with a focus on the four countries—Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico—most important for the successful completion of a full Western Hemispheric integration scheme. The analysis distinguishes between a ‘standard’ market strategy that assigns the task of economic adjustment to market forces, and a ‘competitive’ strategy that more actively employs a range of public policies to facilitate adjustment and correct for instances of market failure. The choices of strategy are explored against the backdrop of international pressures, government business relations, and institutional reform within the state. Two main conclusions are drawn: first, the competitive strategy strongly correlates with more favorable macro- and microeconomic outcomes and, second, mediocre economic performance under a standard market strategy has undermined the spirit of collective action that will be necessary to forge ahead at the hemispheric level.

The activist foreign trade missions of the Clinton Administration are intended to open strategically important, but often difficult-to-enter, emerging markets to US foreign investment with government-to-government negotiations. Some research streams suggest that participation in a trade mission should benefit firms, while others suggest that participation should have no discernible benefit. This paper performs several event studies to analyze the stock return of a portfolio of the publicly traded firms participating in trade missions from 1993 to 1996. It finds that participants did not experience positive or significant abnormal stock returns as a result of mission participation, regardless of how the event date is defined or the data segmented.

This paper investigates the importance of variations in judicial institutions after a ‘shock’ has unraveled a regulatory status quo. State court decisions involving utility regulation are examined. Appointed state courts are generally agreed to be more independent than elected state courts. Before 1970, the primary participants in the process of utility regulation (and thus its largest beneficiaries) were the regulated firms and their commercial customers; afterwards, utility regulation increasingly accommodated consumer groups as well. Certain scholars have proposed that independent courts help keep administrative agencies from deviating from the original wishes of their political principals, and thus might be expected to slow down such changes in regulatory approach (which occurred with few alterations to the governing statutes). Other scholars have proposed instead that independent courts can decide as discretion dictates, and may thus lead such changes. The results of this analysis provide support for the latter view: controlling for other factors (such as partisan affiliation), more independent appointed courts sided more often with consumer groups while less independent elected courts sided more often with regulated firms and their large commercial customers.

From the 1970s to the 1990s, British Telecom (BT), the main telecommunications operator in Britain, underwent a dramatic revolution. The former public administration, often considered inefficient and hardly innovative, became a private company, and now aims to become one of the most dynamic giant telecom players, delivering everything from simple voice calls to advanced eCommerce services all over the world. These changes in the market arena were accompanied by some wide changes in the nonmarket arena, i.e. the institutional and regulatory environment of the British telecom market. This case study analyzes the changes in these two arenas to understand how market and nonmarket strategies may be combined by British Telecom to generate a competitive advantage in a deregulated environment.

In 1997, President Clinton became the first President not awarded fast-track trade negotiating authority since this congressional delegation of trade policymaking authority first began in 1934. Fast-track's failure also represents a case of an unsuccessful business political strategy since business supporters of the measure were easily defeated by labor and environmental opponents, despite the many political ‘privileges’ that business possessed. This case study describes why fast-track is important to the future of US and global trade policy and examines the main reasons for its failure. In doing so, it illustrates theories of pivotal politics, the median voter, collective action, issue framing, international trade's welfare costs and benefits, and international relations that often arise in research and courses on the non-market environment of business, international trade, and international political economy.