This paper analyses the relationship between regional trade integration and trade costs in services industries. The empirical analysis relies, on the one hand, on a dataset of theory-consistent bilateral trade costs calculated for 61 countries over the period 2000-2011 and, on the other hand, on...

The WTO has struggled with the treatment of nonmarket economies (NMEs). What was a nonissue in the original GATT (because of the homogeneity of participants) became quite an issue with the accession of formally centrally planned economies, which were not transformed to market economies, at least...

The Agreement on Trade Facilitation (TFA) embodies the first set of new multilateral rules to have been negotiated under auspices of the WTO since the launch of the Doha Development Agenda, part of a small package of decisions centering on matters of interest to developing countries that was...

Many of the policies that affect international supply chains and associated trade flows are regulatory in nature. Governments generally do not pursue domestic regulation or design trade agreements with a view to support the “trade as production” model by reducing regulatory differences that...

International law, political science and economics scholars are all concerned with analyzing the performance of the WTO as an organization. In this paper we focus on the objectives that these different disciplines attribute to the WTO and how performance is assessed against these objectives. The...

This paper analyses the most recent WTO Appellate Body (AB) report in a series of disputes between the U.S. and the EU over government support to aircraft manufacturers Boeing and Airbus. The measures under dispute in U.S. – Tax Incentives were investment promotion subsidies provided to Boeing...

In December 2019 the WTO Appellate Body (AB) will cease to operate unless the United States stops blocking new appointments. The US argues the AB has exceeded its mandate and has indicated it wants to ensure that the AB performs the role originally assigned to it in 1995. This paper discusses...

The paper firstly identifies and assesses the key developments in the Doha Round that have contributed to the present stalemate. Secondly, it presents several options that the organization could consider for defining its future work program given the new realities of global economic engagement,...

The paper looks at some issue-based plurilateral agreements — such as the Information Technology Agreement (ITA), the Financial Services and Basic Telecommunication Services Agreements, and the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) — with the aim of pointing to their crucial role in...

The Appellate Body (AB) report in Korea -- Pneumatic Valves is among the most structurally complex of recent trade remedies reports. The AB weaves a complicated web to explicate the intricacies of the relationship among the relevant provisions on injury determination in anti-dumping disputes in...