What affects a country’s decision of whether to formally engage in a trade dispute directly related to its exporting interests? This article empirically examines determinants of affected country ...participation decisions in formal trade litigation arising under the World Trade Organization (wto) between 1995 and 2000. It investigates determinants of nonparticipation and examines whether the incentives generated by the system’s rules and procedures discourage active engagement in dispute settlement by developing country members in particular. Though the size of exports at stake is found to be an important economic determinant affecting the decision to participate in challenges to a wto-inconsistent policy, the evidence also shows that measures of a country’s retaliatory and legal capacity as well as its international political economy relationships matter. These results are consistent with the hypothesis of an implicit “institutional bias” generated by the system’s rules and incentives that particularly affects developing economy participation in dispute settlement.
Countries of the Southeast Europe (SEE) region have witnessed significant economic improvement since the beginning of their transition to market economies in the early 1990s. Growth has been ...particularly strong in the past six years, but still lower than in other fast growing countries in the East Asia and Baltic regions, or some of the other new member states of the European Union (EU). The purpose of this study is twofold: (i) to present recent trends in intra regional trade in SEE, in particular following the implementation of Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA); and (ii) to bring the attention of policy makers to some of the remaining impediments to enhanced intra regional trade. The rest of the study is organized as follows. Chapter two describes intraregional trade patterns, both prior and after the entry of CEFTA into force, including more detailed analysis of trade structure. Chapter three emphasizes the role of nontariff barriers (NTBs), such as technical regulations and standards, and their potential impact on trade enhancement, as well as the importance of the trade related environment drawing on global surveys and reports (doing business, Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS), logistics performance indicator, and the enabling trade index). It also looks at rules of origin and their role in trade creation. Chapter four aims to present the view of the private sector on CEFTA and on trade related reforms in general through two case studies of regional firms. Finally, chapter five concludes by summarizing the key recommendations of the study.
The Evolution of the Trade Regimeoffers a comprehensive political-economic history of the development of the world's multilateral trade institutions, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) ...and its successor, the World Trade Organization (WTO). While other books confine themselves to describing contemporary GATT/WTO legal rules or analyzing their economic logic, this is the first to explain the logic and development behind these rules.
The book begins by examining the institutions' rules, principles, practices, and norms from their genesis in the early postwar period to the present. It evaluates the extent to which changes in these institutional attributes have helped maintain or rebuild domestic constituencies for open markets.
The book considers these questions by looking at the political, legal, and economic foundations of the trade regime from many angles. The authors conclude that throughout most of GATT/WTO history, power politics fundamentally shaped the creation and evolution of the GATT/WTO system. Yet in recent years, many aspects of the trade regime have failed to keep pace with shifts in underlying material interests and ideas, and the challenges presented by expanding membership and preferential trade agreements.
This book shines a critical light on preferential trade agreements (PTAs), revealing how the rapid spread of PTAs endangers the world trading system. Numbering by now well over 300, and rapidly ...increasing, these preferential trade agreements, many taking the form of free trade agreements, have re-created the unhappy situation of the 1930s, when world trade was undermined by discriminatory practices. Whereas this was the result of protectionism in those days, ironically it is a result of misdirected pursuit of free trade via PTAs today. The world trading system is at risk again, the author argues, and the danger is palpable. Writing with his customary wit, panache and elegance, the author documents the growth of these PTAs, the reasons for their proliferation, and their deplorable consequences which include the near-destruction of the non-discrimination which was at the heart of the postwar trade architecture and its replacement by what he has called the spaghetti bowl of a maze of preferences. The author also documents how PTAs have undermined the prospects for multilateral freeing of trade, serving as stumbling blocks, instead of building blocks, for the objective of reaching multilateral free trade. In short, the author cogently demonstrates why PTAs are “Termites in the Trading System.”
This volume is organized as follows. Chapter one discusses the newly revamped non-tariff measure (NTM) classification system, the data collection effort so far, and the key characteristics of the ...data. It also highlights the private- sector view that NTMs should support domestic firms' competitiveness across countries. Chapter two describes the analytics of an NTM review, step by step through the key questions, for example, is there a market failure, which market is affected, what are the costs of regulatory action vs. the risks of deregulation, and explains how to answer these questions and how to go about quantification when it is possible. Chapter three focuses on the institutional setup and key principles required to successfully pursue the streamlining of regulations. Since the mid-1990s, developed countries have introduced new regulatory approaches aimed at improving the quality of the decision-making process by enhancing both the analytical framework used by policy makers and the participation of interested parties in the regulatory process. Finally, chapters four and five provide practical examples of streamlining NTMs. Chapter four overviews selected experiences with tackling the trade regulatory agenda at both country and regional levels. Chapter five presents case studies on streamlining NTMs, including technical regulation and prohibition, particularly illustrating the analytics that may support the review process. Finally, NTM reviews should be seen as part of national competitiveness agendas rather than as concessions to trading partners. When NTMs are perceived by the domestic private sector as hampering access to key inputs, business regulatory reviews should naturally lead to NTM reviews. Joint use of the triangle of products will facilitate the adoption by governments of coherent national competitiveness strategies centered on the reduction of trade costs.
Sustaining trade reform Baracat, Elías A; Finger, J. Michael; León Thorne, Raúl ...
2013., 2013, 07-11-2013
eBook, Book
Odprti dostop
Trade reform in Latin America in the 1980s and 1990s was in significant part a reform of policy-making institutions. The institutions that existed when the reforms began had been created in response ...to particular protectionist pressures at particular times, and afterward they were controlled by the interests on whose behalf they had been created. This book was prompted by preliminary evidence suggesting that the reforms have been better sustained in Peru than in Argentina. Peru has continued its liberalization whereas Argentina has imposed a number of new trade restrictions. Moreover, decisions on many of Argentina's restrictions have not gone through the new mechanisms. The objective of this book is to draw lessons from Peruvian and Argentine experience that will be useful to governments that want to maintain an open trade regime. From a positive perspective, the authors want to identify what the Peruvian government has done that has kept its liberalization moving forward. The Peru study focuses on how reform leaders in that country have reinforced the evolution of a new management culture and how they have disseminated widely in Peruvian society a positive vision of Peru in the international economy.
Global Agricultural Trade and Developing Countries presents research findings based on a series of commodity studies of significant economic importance to developing countries. First, the book sets ...the stage with background chapters and investigations of cross-cutting issues. Trade and domestic policy regimes affecting agricultural and food markets are described, and the resulting patterns of production and trade are assessed. The book follows with an analysis of product standards and costs of compliance and their effects on agricultural and food trade. An investigation of the impact of preferences given to selected countries and their effectiveness is next. The evidence on the attempts to decouple agricultural support from agricultural output is then reviewed. The last background chapter explores the robustness of the global gains of multilateral agricultural and food trade liberalization. Given this context, the book presents detailed commodity studies for coffee, cotton, dairy, fruits and vegetables, groundnuts, rice, seafood products, sugar, and wheat. These markets feature distorted policy regimes among industrial or middle-income countries. The studies analyze current policy regimes in key producing and consuming countries document the magnitude of these distortions and estimates the distributional impactswinners and losers-of trade and domestic policy reforms. By bringing the key issues and findings together in one place, Global Agricultural Trade and Developing Countries aids policy makers and researchers, both in their approach to global negotiations and in evaluating their domestic policies on agriculture. This book also complements the recently published Agriculture and the WTO that focuses primarily on the agricultural issues within the context of the WTO negotiations.
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