Unilateral trade liberalization may harm welfare, necessitating global trade agreements.
The study shows that trade agreements like those from the WTO can benefit countries by improving welfare. In a New Keynesian model, reducing tariffs on your own can actually hurt welfare, so agreements are important. The value of a trade agreement that cuts tariffs by 1% can be 0.5% to 2% of consumption, which is a big deal. This is because of factors like imperfect competition and how labor is affected in the model.