The post-World War II world trading system is now more than fifty years old, and not surprisingly, it has evolved through a number of different stages of development and survived a series of perils. Recently, however, the perils seem even greater than before. The failure of the Seattle...

Recent contributions on offshoring often assume that firms can freely split their production process into separate steps which can be ranked according to the cost savings from producing abroad. We replace this assumption by the notion of a technologically determined sequence of production steps....

Since its inception in 1995, more than 330 disputes have been raised under the WTO Dispute Settlement System. The major players in world trade – the EU and the USA – are also the busiest users of this instrument. After looking at links between economic integration and WTO involvement and a...