Modern practice of international business requires companies to structure their corporate form into one which would be advantageous and safe for the management, growth and sustainability of business. However, when corporate structuring is used to avoid obligations of the company, the latter may...

Economic theory has made considerable progress in explaining why sovereign countries cooperate in trade. Central to most theories of trade cooperation are issues of self-enforcement: The threat of reprisal by an aggrieved party maintains the initial balance of concessions and prevents...

The WTO's Dispute Settlement Mechanism (DSM) has been hailed as a fundamental aspect of the Multilateral Trading System for developing countries. At the same time developing countries face many challenges to ensure their effective participation in the mechanism. This paper presents statistical...

The Chinese exchange rate policy is a hotly debated topic. Comments are heard from politicians, economists and lawyers alike, with fingers pointed at the Renminbi (RMB) undervaluation blaming it for job loss in the United States or for causing the credit crisis by creating global imbalances and...

Investor-State dispute settlement mechanisms (ISDS) are an important component of most International Investment Agreements (IIAs) and have significant influence on how disputes between States and investors are resolved.This statistical survey of a large sample of 1,660 bilateral investment...

What is the role of economic evidence and arguments in WTO and investor-state dispute settlement? Both regimes epitomize the search for an international rule of law and legal stability. At the same time, both trade and investment agreements are economic contracts. Economics provides insights not...

Generally speaking, each individual jurisdiction has adopted its own approach concerning the rules on the determination of the governing law applicable in proceedings in international matters. In the international practice, arbitral panels usually distinguish four relatively autonomous areas...

The Trade Policy Review Mechanism (TPRM) received much scholarly attention when it was first established in 1989, but has been overshadowed of late by dispute settlement processes. This paper examines the relationship between barriers to trade that are flagged by the World Trade Organization's...

The aim of this paper is to explore the interactions between international economic law and civil society. The starting point is to analyse the role of international economic law in facilitating the “competition of systems” (principally by reducing barriers to international trade and...

On 1 January 1995, the Understanding on Rules and Procedures Governing the Settlement of Disputes (DSU) entered into force. Until August 2006, the DSU has since been applied to 348 complaints - more cases than dispute settlement under the GATT 1947 had dealt with in nearly five decades. The...