To what extent do the World Health Organization, the World Trade Organization, and the World Bank remain central today and how much influence do they still wield in shaping the global agenda? While several studies have traced the development of various intergovernmental organizations (IGOs),...

This paper examines the evolving dynamics between economic globalization and Asian regional interdependence, and asks whether and how the global financial crisis impacted Asian regionalism. The analysis suggests that the global crisis did trigger advances in regional policy cooperation...

This article reflects on the effectiveness of trade liberalization, as envisaged in the Information Technology Agreement (ITA) of the WTO, for promoting ICT use and production in developing countries. Based on empirical evidence on global exports of ITA goods, and the performance of different...

This paper provides an in-depth examination of the trade effects of three regional trade agreements (RTAs) – the ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (AFTA), the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) and the Southern Cone Common Market (MERCOSUR) -- in the agricultural sector. Results...

This paper constructs agreement specific instruments in order to estimate the effect of membership in a regional cooperation agreement (RCA) on institutional change. For a sample of 144 emerging and developing economies, the results show that membership in a RCA explains a significant part of...

The paper aims to examine economic interdependence and balancing power politics, and their mixed implications for regional institution building in East Asia based on the concept of common security. By pointing out the gap between the violent conflict prediction and the stability and prosperity...

Georgia has long been one of the most trade-open economies in the world. It joined WTO in 2000 and currently has a free trade agreement with the EU and EFTA, as well as with Turkey, the CIS and China. Georgia has been also one of the most business-friendly countries. The basic objectives of...

The founding myth of international law is the sovereign equality of its member states. How, then, can and should it accommodate the rise of one potential hegemon and the decline of another? This review essay discusses an important new book by Cai Congyan, of Xiamen University, that tries to...

The World Trade Organization represents the common institutional framework to carry on the commercial relations among its members on the basis of the accepted international principles endorsed by agreements for standardization and certification, using of sanitary and phytosanitary measures,...

There is a significant amount of published empirical studies that describe the relation of the People’s Republic of China with the World Trade Organization as the vehicle through which this country has reached the goal of opening further its domestic economy by freeing its foreign trade. If...