Robert W. Staiger

Robert W. Staiger is an American economist who is the Roth Family Distinguished Professor in the Arts and Sciences and Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College. He is best known for his research on international trade policy, and in particular on the economics of the GATT/WTO.

Together with Kyle Bagwell, Staiger has developed an influential theory centered around the notion that the key purpose of trade agreements, and in particular the GATT-WTO, is to prevent countries from manipulating terms-of-trade, and that some of the key rules of the GATT-WTO, such as the reciprocity and non-discrimination rules, can be understood in light of that purpose.

Staiger's research has been published in a variety of academic journals, and in two books: The Economics of the World Trading System, co-authored with Kyle Bagwell and published by MIT Press (2002), and A World Trading System for the Twenty-First Century, published by MIT Press in 2022. He has also served as Editor, with Kyle Bagwell, of The Handbook of Commercial Policy, published by Elsevier in December 2016.

Additionally, Staiger is well known for having fostered a large number of graduate students, many of whom have become accomplished academic economists.