Saving Multilateralism: Renovating the House of Global Economic Governance for the 21st Century

Last December, the eyes of all those with a stake in international affairs turned to Europe. First they looked to Geneva, for signs that the long-running Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations at the World Trade Organization (WTO) would get back on track after years of stalemate. Then observers turned to Copenhagen, hoping to see a binding and comprehensive agreement reflecting a commitment on the part of the world’s governments to address the pressing global challenge of climate change. They were to be sorely disappointed. Inscribed on the faces of those struggling to reach agreements was a deep frustration with multilateral processes that were proving incapable of delivery. Instead of agreement, the images playing out on television screens and in newspapers around the world were of fractiousness and division, due in part to the large number of participants and contentiousness of the issues faced; of anger, on the part of all those who felt marginalized by the process; and of concern, from those looking for signs that the world still has the capacity to reach accords when it really matters. The failure of these meetings to produce formal agreements—or even specific paths to reaching agreements in the future—despite the high stakes and the political capital that had been invested in advance left many questioning the ability of the world’s leaders to meet global challenges, shedding a spotlight on the institutions and fora that were established for the purpose of achieving multilateral solutions to the most pressing collective problems of the 21st century. Why did these meetings fail? Many had assumed that the most significant economic crisis since the Great Depression and the overwhelming scientific and circumstantial evidence of damaging changes to our climate would compel world leaders to set aside their differences and reach meaningful agreements. But it did not happen. It is not that the problems are not big enough or urgent enough. The failure to reach agreements can best be seen as part of a long-term trend toward increased complexity in the world that makes it nearly impossible to reach traditional multilateral binding accords, combined with a waning of faith on the part of many countries in multilateralism and multilateral institutions

A Comparative Analysis of Trade Facilitation in Selected Regional and Bilateral Trade Agreement

This study compared the treatment of trade facilitation in four selected regional trade agreements, AFTA, APEC, SAFRA and PACER, and in one bilateral free trade agreement being the Australia-Singapore Free Trade Agreement (ASFTA), with a view to determining model trade facilitation principles and measures which may be instructive for developing country negotiations and policy makers.Liberalisation, Logistics Sector, Trade Facilitation, AFTA, APEC, SAFTA, PACER, ASFTA

Beyond Goods and Services: Competition Policy, Investment, Mutual Recognition, Movement of Persons, and Broader Cooperation Provisions of Recent FTAs Involving ASEAN Countries

We discuss recent bilateral, regional, and country trade, partnership, and economic agreements involving both ASEAN as a single entity and individual ASEAN countries (Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia) focusing on their reach beyond conventional trade in goods and services issues. These agreements are recent, but they are numerous and more are under negotiation. We separately synthesize and evaluate provisions in five areas; competition policy, investment, mutual recognition, movement of persons, and broader cooperation. What emerges is of a picture of ill defined general commitments and precise undertaking, which vary from element to element and country pair to country pair, but there can be little doubt as to the presence of substance, which in turn, seemingly grows in complexity and form in more recent agreements.International Relations/Trade,

Export Dynamism and Market Access

trade flows, trade liberalization, international production networks, development policy

Beyond Goods and Services: Competition Policy, Investment, Mutual Recognition, Movement of Persons, and Broader Cooperation Provisions of Recent FTAs involving ASEAN Countries

We discuss recent bilateral, regional, and country trade, partnership, and economic agreements involving both ASEAN as a single entity and individual ASEAN countries (Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia) focusing on their reach beyond conventional trade in goods and services issues. What emerges is of a picture of ill-defined general commitments and precise undertaking, which vary from element to element and country pair to country pair. These agreements are recent, but they are numerous and more are under negotiation. We separately synthesize and evaluate provisions in five areas: competition policy, investment, mutual recognition, movement of persons, and broader cooperation.

Recent Regional Agreements: Why so many, why so much Variance in Form, why Coming so fast, and where are they Headed?

Recent years have seen a sharp growth in the number of regional agreements both concluded and under negotiation. This paper attempts to document and discuss this growth focusing on US, EU, Chinese, Indian and other agreements. The form, coverage, and content of these agreements varies considerably from case to case. The paper asks why so many, why the variation in form, and why the recent acceleration. Implications for the trading system are discussed in a final section.

Individual Risk Management for Digital Payment Systems

Despite existing security standards and security technologies, such as secure hardware, gaps between users’ demand for security and the security offered by a payment system can still remain. These security gaps imply risks for users. In this paper, we introduce a framework for the management of those risks. As a result, we present an instrument enabling users to evaluate eventual risks related with digital payment systems and to handle these risks with technical and economic instruments.Payment Systems, Digital Money

The WTO from the Perspective of a Developing Country

This Essay starts by laying out the shortcomings of the WTO. In Part II it lays out the issues at stake in the Seattle Conference. Part III is about the effects of the Seattle fiasco. Part IV gives the author\u27s views on what a development round should be. Part V asserts that the WTO should promote fair labor standards. Finally, Part VI discusses the prospects for the WTO to address concerns of developing nations

Institutional change in the international governance of agriculture: a revised account

The place of agriculture in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) prior to 1986 is usually described in terms of either exclusion or exemption from general trading rules. This paper reevaluates the ‘exemption’ argument and its corollary that the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) represented a punctuated equilibrium in the governance of agriculture. Instead it traces the dynamics of institutional change through the history of the GATT/WTO, distinguishing between multilateral trading rounds and the framework of trade rules as separate but linked contexts for addressing agricultural trade matters; and further disaggregating the latter into broad principles and specific rules. It is argued that the broad principles lacked detail but, paradoxically, initially this facilitated an approach to dispute settlement based on conciliation. Subsequent trade tensions exposed an inability to make definitive legal decisions on the compatibility of specific national rules with broad GATT principles. The AoA is rooted in these institutional antecedents, but claims of the legalization of the trade regime are belied by a continued reliance on political flexibility and bargaining