Along many dimensions, China has made progress in strengthening the protection of intellectual property (IP) and expanding its research and development (R&D) base over the past two decades. Meanwhile, people’s understanding of IP has gone beyond a mechanical interpretation of patent law or...

The past two decades have witnessed an active period of global reform with respect to policies concerning Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs). This paper examines – from an empirical, economic perspective – policies that complement the generally strengthened framework for IPRs in developing...

This report examines and classifies policy responses in ten major emerging economies to the rise in international agricultural commodity prices in 2006-08. It also analyses impacts of these responses on the domestic market to evaluate their effectiveness in meeting stated policy objectives. The...

This document is a third update on developments in the field of regional trade agreements and environment covering the period late 2008 to December 2009. It complements the 2007 publication “Environment and Regional Trade Agreements” prepared under the aegis of the Joint Working Party on...

This report examines the market outcomes of different policy options that could be adopted in the event of a future spike in the world price of wheat and rice. The three policies – additional border measures, consumer subsidies or public stocks – only partly mitigate the effect of a price...

This report examines services schedules of commitments in 56 regional trade agreements (RTAs) where an OECD country is a party. The preferential content of RTAs is assessed through an analysis of market access and national treatment commitments at the level of the 155 sub-sectors of the General...

This report presents the findings of the OECD indicators for assessing the economic and trade impact of specific trade facilitation measures in OECD countries. Twelve trade facilitation indicators (TFIs) have been constructed, corresponding to the main policy areas under negotiation at the WTO,...

Quoting a joint analysis undertaken by the OECD and the IEA, G-20 leaders committed in September 2009 to “rationalize and phase out over the medium term inefficient fossil-fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption.” This report draws on previous OECD work to assess the impact on...

This paper investigates how climate change can affect agricultural production and proposes some adaptation measures that could be undertaken to mitigate the negative effects of climate change while enhancing the positive ones. The paper stresses the importance of planned adaptation measures and...

Innovation is critical to creating new sources of growth. Trade is one of the framework conditions that can strengthen innovation in the business sector, as set out in the OECD Innovation Strategy in 2010. This paper broadly sets out three channels through which trade affects innovation. First,...