The benefits of an Investment Facilitation for Development Agreement need not wait for ratification by all signatories or approval from all WTO members. Early implementation can be realized through provisions in signatories' GATT and GATS commitment schedules.

Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi has consolidated his authoritarian regime in recent years. This has been accompanied by a significant increase in Cairo’s foreign debt, which more than tripled between June 2013 and March 2022. The country’s debt policy was directly linked to the...

Mozambique's 3 rd civil war is now in its 5th year in Cabo Delgado province, in the northeast of the country. More than 4300 people have died and nearly one million people have been displaced, more than one third the population of the province. One of the largest investment projects in Africa...

Twenty years after it became a Member of the WTO, China’s image in popular perception has shifted from the biggest success story of the world trading system to its biggest challenge. In the past few years, tons of research have been conducted on what other WTO Members should or could do to...

The conclusion that China's accession to the WTO was a failure from a U.S. perspective stems from: 1) loading too many issues and expectations—including an entire panoply of national security and geostrategic concerns -- on to the WTO and its rules-based, binding dispute settlement system to...

The conclusion that China's accession to the WTO was a failure from a U.S. perspective stems from: 1) loading too many issues and expectations—including an entire panoply of national security and geostrategic concerns -- on to the WTO and its rules-based, binding dispute settlement system to...

International trade flows based on information. Is the foreign market open? What are the conditions for entry? Are there customs duties to be paid and other regulations that need to be satisfied? Businesses thrive on getting as much certainty as they can find, and this requires reliable...

This paper uses 68 measures of trade policy and trade liberalization to ask if membership in theWorld Trade Organization (WTO) and its predecessor the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) is associated with more liberal trade policy. Almost no measures of trade policy are significantly...

China’s rapid rise as a leading global exporter of manufacturing goods since its accession to the WTO in 2001 has been the focus of both admiration and, increasingly, concern, but China is also a large importer of goods, particularly agricultural products. Since China's accession to the WTO,...

“How to deal with China?” This is the biggest question confronting US trade policy, or we can even say its entire foreign policy, today. Over the past few years, the debate on this important issue has benefited from the contributions from many trade law scholars, with those by Wu, Hillman,...

The World Trade Organization (WTO) has gone through stormy times. There have been a number of serious controversies in recent years. Many of these have been attributed to the disruptive positions that former US President Donald J. Trump has taken on international trade and multilateral...

Between December 1994 and March 1999, Mexico, Thailand, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Russia and Brazil experienced major financial crises which were associated with massive recessions and extreme movements of exchange rates. Similar crises have threatened Turkey and Argentina (2000 and 2001) and...

In recent years, the World Trade Organization (WTO), the multilateral trading system, has faced many difficulties and challenges due to the great vows of anti-globalisation and trade protectionism. The appellate body, as a significant portion of the Dispute Settlement Mechanism (DSU) of the WTO,...

We describe recent work on the theory of trade agreements that speaks to the purpose and design of GATT. Our discussion proceeds in three steps. First, we examine the purpose of a trade agreement. In both the traditional economic and the political-economy approaches to the study of trade...

The aim of this research is to examine the legitimacy of global economic governance and clarify to what extent the convergence of interests among state actors and non-state actors enhances the effectiveness of the World Trade Organization (WTO). The strengthened legitimacy of global economic...

East Asian countries have become much more active in utilizing the WTO dispute settlement system to assert their legal rights. The dispute settlement experience so far for these countries has shown strong tendency of domestic governments to defend economic interest of major industries. Their...

Established in 1995, the World Trade Organization (WTO) was the culmination of half a century of global trade liberalization achieved under the auspices of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Subsequent agreements to achieve further liberalization — and to establish rules for...

On their fiftieth anniversary, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank were" extensively reviewed, both to mark the occasion and to consider, often critically roles and performance. This paper reviews the functions of the two institutions in light of their" evolution over the past...

This article builds from original fieldwork to show what lies behind China’s remarkably successful use of international trade law to take on the United States and Europe. The World Trade Organization (WTO) is unique in China’s international relations as it is the only forum where China, with...

Marathi Abstract: प्राचिन काळापासूनच शेती हा भारतीय लोकांचा प्रमूख व्यवसाय राहिलेला आहे. आज 65% लोकसंख्या शेतीवर विविध...

“Trademarks are signs that identify goods or services offered on a market. Trademarks are nothing new. For example, Ancient Greeks and Romans stamped or inscribed on various groups an identifying symbol or name. Today the trademark is a way to attract the public. Consumers look at trademarks...

The whole complex of pandemic, economic, and social crises has become a kind of a stress test for the system of multilateral cooperation as it is weakened by geopolitical conflicts, contradictions between the key members and growing mistrust due to stalled reforms of international organizations...

This article–a unique collaboration between political philosophy and empirical analysis–applies the problem of the second best to the subject of global governance reform. The problem of the second best raises a concern about an “approximation trap” where steps intended to move closer to...

Following the 2020 United States presidential election, economists have high hopes for the president-elect, Mr. Joseph Biden, and for the next US administration. The hopes are especially for the potential changes in the global trade architecture.There are quite a few outstanding issues in the...

On March 1, 2021, Dr. Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria’s former finance minister and former vice-president of the World Bank, started her first day in office at the WTO as Director-General. There are a myriad of worries and challenges ahead of her. Notwithstanding its long-term importance, the...

To augment the global production and distribution of Covid-19 medical products such as vaccines, drugs and other therapeutics, countries are negotiating for temporarily waiving certain provisions of the TRIPS agreement at the WTO. Depending on the conditions that would govern the waiver,...

We discuss China's stance in the WTO post-accession, noting the many issues with implementation of China's accession terms by 2007. We evaluate how much benefit China can realistically receive from WTO membership given current problems with dumping actions against China and trade restrictions...

Concerns about the legitimacy and accountability of international institutions have prompted a sizable literature on the potential of civil society to help democratize global economic governance. Attention has primarily focused on the institutional factors impacting civil society participation...

This article assesses the position of International Financial Institutions (IFIs) such as the World Bank in times of global crises. It finds out that during such times, international aid to thriving economies are not difficult to mobilise but without deliberate effort to trace the accountability...

Contrary to the recent literature that concludes that the GATT/WTO has been completely ineffective in promoting world trade, this paper furnishes robust evidence that the institution has had a powerful and positive impact on trade. The impact has, however, been uneven. GATT/WTO membership for...

I examine the hypothesis that membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) and its predecessor the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) has increased the stability and predictability of trade flows. I use a large data set covering annual bilateral trade flows between over 175...

The enormous growth in global commerce has occasioned a rapid increase in international commercial disputes. Transnational trade deadlocks, if left unattended, can result in severe global economic and political problems. Thus, the need for efficient trade dispute resolution mechanisms. The World...

This paper furnishes robust evidence that the GATT/WTO has had a powerful and positive impact on trade. The impact has, however, been uneven. GATT/WTO membership for industrial countries has been associated with a large increase in imports estimated at about 40 percent of world trade. The same...

How did a country join the General Agreement on Tariffs & Trade(“GATT”)? How does a country become a member of the World Trade Organization (“WTO”)?GATT Articles XXXII-XXXIII and WTO Agreement Articles XI-XII provide the answers. To examine these provisions in the context of China’s...

This paper provides a genealogy of consensus decision-making and democratic discourse in the multilateral trade regime. It argues that the contemporary link between the World Trade Organisation’s consensus procedure and ideas of ‘international democracy’ has its roots in a struggle that...

The most sanctified obligation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) is the promotion and facilitation of international trade and liberalisation of the world economy. Although WTO members are committed to the WTO principle of free flow of goods and services among its members, the WTO permits its...

This paper documents and assesses the significance of the policy changes in China that WTO accession implies in 3 key service categories (banking, insurance, and telecoms), asking whether it is likely they will really be fully implemented in their entirety as undertaken at signature in 2002....

With the establishment of the World Trade Organization in 1995, the dispute settlement mechanism for international trade was greatly prepared unlike the old GATT system. It has a very different pattern from that of original GATT system. In our case, international trade is a matter of the future...

In this article, I analyze the interaction between income tax competition and the multilateral trade regime. I argue that several forms of tax competition such as special tax zones (STZs), export tax incentives, participation exception, profit shifting toleration, and tax havens distort...