At first glance, this paper deals with a simple classification issue only: the coverage and treatment of certain manufacturing operations and the resulting products under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) rather than under its long-standing counterpart in merchandise trade, the...

The purpose of this paper is to report some initial findings based on the WTO Dispute Settlement Data Set (Ver. 2.0) that the authors have compiled for the World Bank. The data set contains approximately 28 000 observations on the workings of the Dispute Settlement (DS) system. It covers all 351...

The broadened scope of the GATT/WTO through successive rounds of trade liberalization is explained as a result of trade-partner specificity, linked agreements, and cross retaliation. In more recent years, however, countries have pursued trade liberalization through sector specific zero-for-zero...

While tariff rates around the world have decreased during the last five decades, there has been an increase in other instruments of protectionism – in particular, antidumping (AD), countervailing duties (CVD) and global safeguards (SG) - collectively, temporary trade barriers (TTBs). In...

The Dispute Settlement (DS) system is a central feature of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement. This compulsory and binding two-level mechanism for the adjudication of disputes between WTO Members is the most active among international courts. The functioning of the DS system has...

Capital controls and exchange restrictions are used to restrict international capital flows during economic crises. This paper looks at the legal implications of these restrictions and explores the current international regulatory framework applicable to international capital movements and...

So far no existing study has analyzed what determines people’s trust in the IMF, the World Bank, and the WTO even though – in the absence of democratic accountability – this is one of the few ways to assess the legitimacy of these institutions. This study is intended to fill this gap in...

The half century leading up to the crisis of 2008-2009 was the best such period in world economic history, especially in the Asia Pacific. Peace and relative economic stability permitted unprecedented liberalization, economic integration, and advances in productivity and growth. But the...

The service sector is evolving. New services and new modes of delivering existingservices have increased the complexities of services negotiations in the WTO and inFTAs.The WTO negotiations focus on market access but FTAs tend to go beyond marketaccess to seeking regulatory commitments from...

This study covers the history of Sino-US trade relations with a particular focus on the past decade, during which time each has been a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Providing a brief history of 19th and 20th century economic relations, this paper examines in detail the trade...