International trade is a powerful force of societal transformation. Trade agreements not only stimulated trade; they have improved the quality and integrity of domestic economic and political institutions. This view on trade as a force of institutional development and societal transformation has...

Old beliefs, new symbols, new faces. In 2013, a small group of German green and left-wing activists, professional campaign NGOs and well-established protectionist organisations set up deceptive communication campaigns against TTIP, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between the...

What if the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is not a doomed initiative - and what if it will actually make inroads into modern trade problems? The Asia-Pacific region is now the world's centre of economic gravity holding an increasing share of world production and promising a rapid turn into the...

Cross-border data flows are an integral mechanism of today's economy, impacting a country's competitiveness and growth. All economic sectors rely on secure, cost-efficient and real-time access to data. A requirement that all data-related business processes must take place within a country does...

Forced data localisation measures are on the rise around the world, fragmenting the Internet and increasing costs for businesses and consumers. Until the year 2000, only 15 measures were imposed globally. By 2007, the number of measures doubled and it more than doubled again until today. The...

Even low import tariff rates have a significant compounding effect on the final retail price of medicines, which in turn impacts on affordability. While much of the "access to affordable medicines" debate is about intellectual property rights (IPRs) and business practices of pharmaceutical...

Standard-essential patents (SEPs) have been critical to the ICT revolution. SEPs have allowed for the fast rates of innovation diffusion that the world has witnessed in the past 25 years. Yet the SEP system is under pressure. It suffers from a smoldering crisis of confidence as costly legal...

The European Commission is reviewing the use of supplementary protection certificates (SPCs), a patent term extension motivated by the increasing length of market approvals for pharmaceuticals. The initiative is driven by EU Health Ministers thinking that changes in patent exclusivity rights...

This background paper describes the methodology used for the ECIPE Occasional Paper called "The Costs of Data Localisation: A Friendly Fire on Economic Recovery" in which the costs of data services regulation are assessed. This paper provides further explanation on how the costs of data...