Trademarks are words, signs, symbols, or combinations thereof that identify goods as manufactured by a particular person or a company, therefore allowing consumers to distinguish between goods originating in different sources. Trademarks belong to the wider family of intellectual property rights...

How will developing countries fare in this new international environment? This book brings together empirical research that assesses the effects of changing intellectual property regimes on various measures of economic and social performance-ranging from international trade, foreign investment...

An important question in the design of bilateral and regional free trade agreements (FTAs) covering services is to what extent nonmembers benefit from the trade preferences that are negotiated among members. This question is resolved through services rules of origin. The restrictiveness of rules...

Promoting quality health services to large population segments is a key ingredient to human and economic development. At its core, healthcare policymaking involves complex tradeoffs between promoting equitable and affordable access to a basic set of health services, creating incentives for...

Maritime transport costs significantly impede international trade. This article examines why these costs are so high in some countries and quantifies the importance of two explanations: restrictive trade policies and private anticompetitive practices. It finds that both matter, but the latter...

Ongoing privatization and financial liberalization in emerging economies have let to continuous growth in the number of depository receipt offerings from these countries. Asian and Latin American companies have been the biggest source of offerings. The main advantages of depository receipts stem...

The authors look at the rise of the Internet as the main application behind the emerging global information infrastructure. Many now believe that the Internet provides a window into a future in which access to information will be independent of geographic location and interactivity in a...

Every major regional trade agreement now has a services dimension. Is trade in services so different that there is need to modify the conclusions on preferential agreements pertaining to goods reached so far? The authors first examine the implications of unilateral policy choices in a particular...

Policy makers around the world recognize the potentially harmful consequences of trademark counterfeiting and copyright piracy. Indeed, many countries have recently initiated policy reforms to strengthen the enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPR). Further, minimum standards of...