This paper argues that GSP labour rights conditionality is in conformity with WTO law. This hinges on the critical question of whether the realisation of labour standards can meet a ‘development need,' a term considered by the WTO Appellate Body report in the EC – Tariffs Preferences case,...

The latest generation of Preferential Trade Agreements (PTA) features a diversity of ‘deep integration' provisions, which mandate a wide range of border and behind-the-border regulatory and institutional reforms in areas such as food safety and technical standards, customs administration,...

Recently, it has become apparent to developing countries in the WTO that their limited bargaining power has, in fact, been a stumbling block to obtaining desired negotiation outcomes in the multilateral trade system. Thus, to execute any fundamental changes to the status quo, there was a need to...

This paper examines whether, in the current environment of international economic law, Geographical Indications (GIs) as an Intellectual Property (IP) system can be used to protect forms of Traditional Knowledge (TK) in developing countries and achieve economic development for local communities....

This paper shows that the substantial disparity in German bank lending towards industrial (IC) and non-industrial (Non-IC) countries is largely explained by differences in countries' endowments and only to a minor extent by German banks' different treatment of these country groups. This is...

In the first era of financial globalization (1880-1914), global capital market integration led to substantial net capital movements from rich to poor economies. The historical experience stands in contrast to the contemporary globalization where gross capital mobility is equally high, but did...

This paper is an empirical investigation into the role of credit history in determining the spread on sovereign bank loans. It employs an error-in-variables approach used in rational-expectations-macro-econometrics to set up a structural model that links sovereign loan spreads to realized...

Germany's role in financing economic development in Asia on a sustainable basis leaves much to be desired. Direct investors are still underrepresented in the region. Commercial banks have fueled speculative bubbles. Official development financing does not appear to be based on efficiency-related...

For FDI to help achieve the international development goal of halving absolute poverty, two conditions have to be met. First, poor developing countries need to be attractive to foreign investors. Second, the host-country environment in which foreign investors operate must be conducive to...

In the Copenhagen Accord of December 2009, developed countries agreed to provide start-up finance for adaptation in developing countries and expressed the ambition to scale this up to $100 billion per year by 2020. The financial mechanisms to deliver this support have to be tailored to country...