Trade policy, openness, and development : essays in honour of L. Alan Winters

Abstract

Alan Winters was the editor of the World Trade Review (WTR) from December 2008 to mid-2020. Launched in 2002 as a joint initiative of the WTO Secretariat and Cambridge University Press, the WTR has become the leading multidisciplinary journal in the field of international trade broadly defined. In the period during which Alan was editor of the journal, the number of issues grew from three to five, reflecting the significant increase in the number of quality submissions. The impact factor of the journal rose to 1.6 in 2020, an increase by 150%, above that of The World Economy, arguably the incumbent in the field when the WTR was created. Multidisciplinary journals confront greater challenges than single discipline journals in attracting high-quality scholarship. The fact that the WTR has become firmly established as a leading journal in the field of international trade law, policy, and political economy is a tribute to Alan’s support for multidisciplinary research. He actively encouraged contributions by legal scholars and practitioners, and supported collaboration between lawyers, economists, and political scientists. An annual special issue of articles assessing the WTO’s dispute settlement case law, co-authored by lawyers and economists, the product of a long-running project led by Chad Bown, Henrik Horn, and Petros Mavroidis, is a prominent example. It is not a coincidence that the group who came together for the Festschrift Conference1 that was the genesis of this special issue comprised economists, lawyers, and political scientists.