The empirical relevance of AD has increased over the last decade as many new countries joined the so-called 'traditional users' (i.e., Australia, Canada, EEC, New Zealand and the US) in making heavy use of this protectionist tool. This wave of AD activity has stimulated many theoretical studies even though the actual dimension of the phenomenon is an empirical issue. In fact, descriptive statistics on the use of AD flourish in the literature but ignore aspects of the AD phenomenon that this paper suggests are important. A comprehensive picture of the use of AD can provide valuable insights for the WTO multilateral trade negotiations in Doha since they have the objective of 'clarifying and improving' the current AD regulations. This paper improves upon the existing literature on the use of AD in two dimensions. First, it presents the first comprehensive dataset on the time profile of implementations of AD laws around the world. The fact that many countries have not yet used their AD law hints to the possibility of increasing volumes of AD cases in the near future as these countries overcome the initial difficulties in the application of the law and pursue further trade liberalisation. The time pattern of AD law implementations and its correlation with GATT/WTO legal dispositions suggest that multilateral negotiations can have a large effect on the use of AD, and therefore Doha offers a valuable opportunity to tackle this issue.
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