This paper provides an overview of institutional, economic and legal aspects of the relationship between national environmental policies and the multilateral trading system. In particular, it analyses some of the difficulties the WTO Dispute Settlement System faces when having to evaluate...

In September 2015, Heads of State and Government will gather in New York to agree the post-2015 development agenda. The role that trade will play in this agenda is neither clear, nor agreed. Yet an open, non-discriminatory, rules-based multilateral trading system underpins sustainable...

Do WTO commitments reduce the risk of trade policy reversals? To address this question, we rely on the theoretical model of varying cooperative tariffs by Bagwell and Staiger (1990) to specify our empirical model for the probability of a tariff increase. We then study how WTO tariff commitments...

This Working Paper contains some observations concerning the evolution of trade and trade-related policies in the Asia-Pacific region since the establishment in 1989 of the Trade Policy Review Mechanism (TPRM), whose goal is to improve the transparency of these policies. It also draws some...

One of the goals of the multilateral trading system is to enhance the stability and predictability of the environment in which traders operate.Binding tariffs at the WTO reduces the scope for their discretionary use. But, countries have bound tariffs at ceiling levels often substantially above...

This paper explores the role that quality of infrastructure has on a country's trade performance, estimating a gravity model that incorporates bilateral tariffs and a number of indicators for the quality of infrastructure. The paper looks at the impact of the quality of infrastructure (road,...

The aim of this paper is to analyse developing countries' participation so far in the current round of services negotiations under the Doha Development Agenda. The paper analyses developing countries' negotiating positions, as evidenced by their multilateral negotiating proposals; their initial...

The purpose of the paper is to discuss the effects of WTO accession on policy-making and institutional reforms in transition countries. This is done by looking at the experience of those transition countries which are already Members of the WTO. We start by examining the effect of accession on...

In addition to cross-border supply, the Agreement covers three additional types of transactions, i.e. the supply of services via consumer movements abroad as well as the presence of foreign firms and foreign service professionals in the respective markets. At the same time, the GATS accommodates...

This is a revision and update of "Intellectual Property Provisions in Regional Trade Agreements" by Valdés and Runyowa (2012). This paper adjusts the methodology applied to assess the intellectual property (IP) provisions contained in regional trade agreements (RTAs) and the aggregation of such...