The World Trade Organization has been until recently an effective framework for cooperation because it has continually adapted to changing economic realities. The current Doha Agenda is an aberration because it does not reflect one of the largest shifts in the international economic and trading...

June 2000 - As each new round of multilateral trade negotiations approaches, there is a demand for a negotiating rule that would give credit for previous unilateral liberalization. The feasibility and desirability of such a rule depend on when it is instituted. As each new round of multilateral...

Preferential trade agreements have boomed in recent years and extended their reach well beyond tariff reduction, to cover policy areas such as investment, competition, and intellectual property rights. This paper uses new information on the content of preferential trade agreements to examine the...

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? Mattoo and Fink first examine the implications of unilateral policy choices in a...

This paper analyzes the provisions of the new Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA), drawing insights from trade theory and recent developments in the economics of information and law. A central conclusion is that in a world where imperfectly informed procurers purchase from imperfectly...

A fundamental shift is taking place in the world economy to which the multilateral trading system has failed to adapt. The Doha process focused on issues of limited significance while the burning issues of the day were not even on the negotiating agenda. This paper advances five propositions:...

Can regionalism do what multilateralism has so far failed to do?promote greater openness of services markets? Although previous research has pointed to the wider and deeper legal commitments under regional agreements as proof that it can, no previous study has assessed the impact of such...