Commitments in regional trade agreements (RTAs) that fall short of the same countries' obligations under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) are a relatively frequent phenomenon. However, they have gone widely unnoticed in the literature to date and drawn very little attention in...

This paper looks at market access and national treatment commitments for services in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and in 95 regional trade agreements (RTAs) involving the countries that are covered in the OECD Services Trade Restrictiveness Index (STRI). The objective is to...

As countries turn more to regionalism as a means of forwarding co-operation on trade rules and other areas of policymaking, rules on investment are increasingly being incorporated into regional trade agreements (RTAs). We analyse the economic consequences of including investment provisions in...