The recent proliferation of regional trade agreements (RTAs) has intensified the debate on their merits. A growing literature has addressed this policy debate, focusing on the welfare and trade effects of RTAs and their likely impacts on the multilateral trading system. Some view them as...

A simple but new theoretical approach is used to analyse ex-ante the impact of tariff reduction. Thismethodology is based on the assumption of a constant price relation between each direct substitutableproduct. No elasticities are needed, but accurate import and domestic prices of the most...

Several Caribbean sugar producing countries are actively looking for viable alternatives to recover some of the expected lost revenues due to the WTO (World Trade Organization) ruling that sugar subsidies in the European Union (EU) are illegal. One alternative worth considering is exporting...

The post-World War II world trading system is now more than fifty years old, and not surprisingly, it has evolved through a number of different stages of development and survived a series of perils. Recently, however, the perils seem even greater than before. The failure of the Seattle...

This paper argues that any discussion of the operationalization of Gross National Happiness (GNH) in Bhutan within an immediate or intermediate time-frame must account for the fact that operationalization implies the adoption of long-range policy objectives and immediate or intermediate policy...

The theoretical debate over whether countries can and should set tariffs in response to the foreign export elasticities they face goes back to Edgeworth (1894). Despite the centrality of the optimal tariff argument in trade policy, there exists no evidence about whether countries actually...

Angesichts der Bedeutung ausländischer Direktinvestitionen in den globalen Wirtschaftsbeziehungen ist ein multilaterales Investitionsabkommen (MAI) zwingend notwendig. Dieses sollte die Liberalisierung der Etablierung und des operativen Geschäfts ausländischer Investoren induzieren wie auch...

Bis vor wenigen Jahren wurde die chinesische Automobilindustrie in internationalen Industriekreisen kaum wahrgenommen. Sie war klein, von preiswerten einheimischen Nutzfahrzeugen geprägt, rückständig und vom Rest der Welt isoliert. Heute wird China in zahlreichen Zeitungsartikeln als "Motor...

In the early 1990s, the United States began to run a significant trade deficit with China due to the dual forces of greater trade liberalization and China’s transition from a command economy towards a market economy. Proponents of free trade with China argue that greater integration will lead...

The SPS Agreement and the related WTO dispute settlement mechanism are an important first step in strengthening the global trade architecture, bringing in greater transparency and orderly conditions to world food trade. However, implementation of the new trade rules has turned out to be a more...