Inspired by knowledge of law and economics and competition law, this paper suggests an integrated framework for understanding economic law as an autonomous discipline. In developing this framework, this paper first assumes economic law to be an independent body of law comprising various branches...

The proliferation of regional trade agreements (“RTAs”) behoves all WTO members to assess the extent to which RTAs depart from fundamental principles in the WTO such as the most-favoured-nation (“MFN”) treatment in the GATT and in particular, the WTO Agreement on Technical Barriers to...

Today international society faces a challenge in addressing the global financial and economic crises. Never-ending debates on the key causes of financial crises shows there is uncertainty in financial matter. Unlike risk, uncertainty cannot be forecasted by mathematical and stochastic methods....

China-Publications has been perceived as a milestone for both the WTO regulatory framework and China's domestic governance. On the other hand, it also reveals the Dragon's pains as either a WTO Member or a domestic governor. The acute pain of unequal WTO Membership recurred in terms of China...

Private-sector standards are the standards developed and adopted by different types of private entities such as industry associations, NGOs, large retailers and commercial companies. Nowadays, these standards are widely applied on a voluntary basis by main market players in developed and some...

The obligations of non-discrimination in international economic law hinge upon the question of what constitutes ‘like products'. It is not clear that it is appropriate to transpose the competition-oriented approach to product likeness or substitutability under Article III of GATT to other...

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...

The idea that a breach of the investor's ‘legitimate expectations' may be relevant in deciding upon a violation of an investment treaty has been recurrently put forward by claimants in investment treaty arbitrations and endorsed by a growing number of arbitral tribunals in the last few years....