The Doha multilateral round of trade negotiations sponsored by the WTO has been dragging on for over a decade, with no end in sight. In this short paper we assess empirically what determines the duration of trade negotiations, focusing on the span between the start of trade talks and their...

The Agreement on Trade Facilitation (TFA) embodies the first set of new multilateral rules to have been negotiated under auspices of the WTO, part of a small package of decisions centering on matters of interest to developing countries that was “harvested” from the broader Doha round. This...

This paper first briefly describes the role of the WTO and its history. It then lays out a simple bargaining model of international negotiations, which can be used for understanding the Doha round of talks. This simple framework is used to distil and discuss a number of potential explanations...

This Paper estimates the effect on international trade of three multilateral organizations intended to increase trade: 1) the World Trade Organization (WTO) and its predecessor the Generalized Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT); 2) the International Monetary Fund (IMF); and 3) the...

Textile and clothing (T&C) industry has experienced important developments since 1994. The most important is that Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC) signed (1994) under supervision of World Trade Organization. The system governing T&C trade for more than 40 years has expired by means of...

This paper argues that further moves to liberalize trade and to implement existing GATT disciplines may have a greater impact on global competition than the pursuit of harmonized multilateral competition policy disciplines. It also suggests that current GATT rules and case law provide scope for...

This paper surveys the major options that have been proposed concerning a possible agreement on trade-related anti-trust principles and evaluates both their desirability and feasibility. Three criteria are used to evaluate the options: (i) the extent to which they enhance the contestability of...

This paper discusses what could be done to expand services trade and investment through a multilateral agreement in the WTO. A distinction is made between market access liberalization and the regulatory preconditions for benefiting from market opening. We argue that moving forward on...

WTO members are starting to consider whether and how to develop multilateral disciplines on competition policies. These discussions are taking place in the absence of concerted efforts to compile comparable information on the conditions of competition existing on member country markets. We argue...

The stalemate reached on launching negotiations on most of the Singapore Issues at Cancún provides an opportunity to revisit the knowledge base upon which proposals for international collective action may be drawn. This Paper examines the available evidence on public procurement practices in...