At the same time as regional agreements to liberalize trade in services were being pursued by OECD countries, services were also introduced onto the agenda of a multilateral trade negotiation - the Uruguay Round. This paper focuses on the relationship between regional agreements and the draft...

Key questions in evaluating the justification for free trade agreements (FTAs) are whether formal international cooperation is necessary to promote greater contestability of markets through harmonization or recognition of regulatory regimes ("deep integration"), and whether any actions taken to...

Since the early 1990s, numerous countries have adopted or strengthened competition legislation. In this Paper we investigate the impact of competition law on industry markups over time and across a large number of countries. We find both domestic and foreign competition to be major sources of...

The share of intra-industry trade (IIT) in total trade between Central and East European nations and the EU is among the highest of all the EU’s bilateral trade flows. IIT is broken down into horizontal and vertical components and the determinants of each is investigated. Vertical IIT...

This paper investigates the activities of the Bulgarian competition office, the Commission for the Protection of Competition, during 1991–5. Descriptive statistics are provided on the industry incidence of investigations, the types of behaviour that were investigated, and the frequency with...

This paper studies whether political campaign contributions influence agricultural protection in the United States in the manner suggested by the political economy model of Grossman and Helpman (1994), using a detailed cross-sectional data set of agricultural protection, subsidies, and...

Services have become increasingly prominent on the international policy agenda since the early 1980s. Very little information exists on how and why international transactions in services occur, however. This paper discusses a number of the problems confronting governments interested in...

The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) is a landmark in terms of creating multilateral disciplines in virgin territory, but is a failure in terms of generating liberalization and locking-in existing policy regimes affecting international transactions in services. There are two key...

The effects on national welfare and on market access of two public procurement practices, discrimination and non-transparency, are examined. Both policies have become prominent in international trade negotiations, such as the ongoing Doha Round of WTO trade talks. Our analysis shows that...

This paper explores options for governments of Central and East European countries to increase the sensitivity of competition law enforcement to trade and investment policy, thereby supporting a liberal trade policy stance. The competition laws of these countries tend to resemble European Union...