WTO judges are proposed by the WTO Secretariat and elected to act as ‘judges’ if either approved by the parties to a dispute, or by the WTO Director-General in case no agreement between the parties has been possible. They are typically ‘Geneva crowd’, that is, they are either current or...

The purpose of the study is to propose interpretations of the National Treatment (NT) provision included in Art. III GATT, unbound by case-law interpretations of this provision. To make such proposals, we need to understand the role of the provision in the agreement. To this end, we first...

This paper surveys the law and economics literature on WTO dispute settlement. As a background, we first briefly lay out main features of the legal framework, and discuss possible roles of a dispute settlement mechanism. We then discuss the two main themes in the empirical literature on dispute...

Trading nations exchange tariff concessions in the context of trade liberalizing rounds. Tariffs, nonetheless, are not the only instrument affecting the value of a concession. Domestic instruments affect it as well, but public order is not negotiable, and, consequently, is not scheduled. Public...

Few EU decisions have caused more international outcry than the extension of the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) to apply to aviation. The directive was legally challenged by US airlines before a UK court, which referred the case to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) for a preliminary ruling...

Almost all WTO dispute panels exceed their statutory time limits. This is often seen to indicate a more general problem for panels to manage their tasks. The time required varies considerably across panels however, suggesting that they do not face the same problems. To shed light on these...

The paper argues that focusing only on disputes formally raised in the WTO Dispute Settlement system underestimates the extent of trade conflict resolution within the WTO. Both the SPS and TBT Committees address a significant number of ‘specific trade concerns’ (STCs) that in the...

This study contributes to the debate concerning the appropriate role of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) in in WTO dispute settlement. Its distinguishing feature is that it seeks to address this relationship in light of the reason why the parties have chosen to separate their...

This study is part of The American Law Institute (ALI) project Legal and Economic Principles of World Trade Law. The project aims to analyze the central instrument in the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement for the regulation of trade in goods – The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade...

This paper proposes an approach for predicting the pattern of mergers when different mergers are feasible. It generalizes the traditional IO approach, employing ideas on coalition-formation from cooperative game theory. The model suggests that in concentrated markets, mergers are conductive to...