This paper reviews the building of a consensus in favour of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (the TRIPs Agreement) during the Uruguay Round negotiations. The paper then argues that, at a time when the impact of TRIPs is...

The Fourth Session of the Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO), held in Doha, Qatar, in November 2001, launched a new round of multilateral trade negotiations (MTN) and a work programme (WP) for the WTO involving the negotiating agenda and steps for meeting the challenges...

The dispute settlement system (DSS) of the World Trade Organization (WTO), which is considered as the “Jewel in the Crown” of the WTO, is also the busiest of its kind. While this no doubt reflects its success, the system is far from perfect, and has drawn criticism both from within and...

Market access is the most important liberalizing principle in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). It entails a general prohibition of quantitative restrictions, which however is conditional on commitments undertaken by Members in their respective Schedules of Commitments. Case-law...

This article discusses whether the current proliferation of preferential trade agreements - the so-called competitive liberalization - encourages evolution toward multilateral free trade. It argues that countries pursuing preferential trade initiatives are in pursuit of the economic rents...

We show that the inclusion of antidumping (AD) and countervailing subsidy (CVD) regulations can increase the range of feasible preferential trade agreements (PTA), given that governments are sensitive to pressure groups defending import competing industries. AD and CVD regulations serve as an...

In March 2018, the United States adopted measures to increase tariffs on a range of imported steel and aluminum products, claiming that the measures are justified for its national security concerns. Several WTO Members, including the European Union, India, Russia, Turkey, and China, have argued...

Competition policy, today, is an essential element of the legal and institutional framework for the global economy. Whereas decades ago, anti-competitive practices tended to be viewed mainly as a domestic phenomenon, most facets of competition law enforcement now have an important international...

The rapid diffusion of the internet and electronic commerce changes the way business and international trade take place. The new economy poses new challenges to the international regulatory framework, since small distortions due to differing sets of regulations and taxation between countries...

New powers, such as China, India and Brazil, are challenging the traditional dominance of the US in the governance of the global economy. It is generally taken for granted that the rise of new powers is simply a reflection of their growing economic might. In this article, however, I challenge...