Regional Trade and Economic Integration


Book Description

The Asia-Pacific region has emerged as a dominant player in trade and will continue to be an influential component of world trade and economics. This book presents an informative outlook on the various regional and trade agreements (RTAs) and their beneficial effects on bilateral trade. In particular, the authors concentrate on India and China, the two major rising powers, and the impact of exchange of information and sharing of resources between these two countries in wide-ranging areas. It provides an incisive analysis and a roundup of all major RTAs and also presents an overview of all major agreements between the countries involved, which might propel their trade numbers and influence future economic engagements. The book also discusses possible obstacles that are encountered during the implementation of RTAs and circumvention routes that can be taken to ensure the successful execution of the agreements. International trade agreements, such as General Agreements on Trade and Tariffs, which have revolutionized the trade dynamics by opening up new areas of trade and formulating specific guidelines for the member countries to adhere to during trade negotiations, are discussed. The book also provides new insights into some of the issues under negotiation, such as sensitive lists, trade, investment cooperation, and trade in services. The existing economic cooperation arrangements in the region as well as those that are at various stages of study and negotiations, empirical insights and policy suggestions are elucidated in detail.




Mega-Regional Trade Agreements


Book Description

This book provides an in-depth analysis of "Mega-Regionals", the new generation of trans-regional free-trade agreements (FTAs) currently under negotiation, and their effect on the future of international economic law. The main focus centres on the EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), but the findings are also applicable to similar agreements under negotiation, such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).The specific features of Mega-Regional Trade Agreements raise a number of issues with respect to their potential effect on the current system of international trade and investment law. These include the consequences of Mega-Regionals for the most-favoured-nation (MFN) principle, their relation to the multilateral system of the World Trade Organization (WTO), their democratic legitimacy and their interaction with existing bilateral investment treaties (BITs).The book is intended for academics and practitioners working in the field of international economic law.




Handbook of Deep Trade Agreements


Book Description

Deep trade agreements (DTAs) cover not just trade but additional policy areas, such as international flows of investment and labor and the protection of intellectual property rights and the environment. Their goal is integration beyond trade or deep integration. These agreements matter for economic development. Their rules influence how countries (and hence, the people and firms that live and operate within them) transact, invest, work, and ultimately, develop. Trade and investment regimes determine the extent of economic integration, competition rules affect economic efficiency, intellectual property rights matter for innovation, and environmental and labor rules contribute to environmental and social outcomes. This Handbook provides the tools and data needed to analyze these new dimensions of integration and to assess the content and consequences of DTAs. The Handbook and the accompanying database are the result of collaboration between experts in different policy areas from academia and other international organizations, including the International Trade Centre (ITC), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and World Trade Organization (WTO).




Cross Regional Trade Agreements


Book Description

An unacknowledged key feature of East Asian FTA diplomacy is the region's active cross-regional preferential trading relations. In sharp contrast to the Americas and Europe, where cross-regional initiatives gained strength after the consolidation of regional trade integration, East Asian governments negotiate trade deals with partners outside of their region at an early stage in their FTA policies. The book asks three main questions: Are there regional factors in East Asia encouraging countries to explore cross-regionalism early on? What are the most important criteria behind the cross-regional partner selection? How do cross-regional FTSs (CRTAs) influence their intra-regional trade initiatives? Through detailed country case studies from China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia, we show the ways in which these governments seek to leverage their CRTAs in the pursuit of intra-regional trade integration objectives, a process that yields a much more permeated regionalism.




Preferential Trade Agreements


Book Description

This volume assembles a stellar group of scholars and experts to examine preferential trade agreements (PTAs), a topic that has time and again attracted the interest of analysts. It presents a discussion of the evolving economic analysis regarding PTAs and the various dysfunctions that continually place them among the priority items for (re)negotiation by the WTO. The book explores recent empirical research that casts doubt on the old 'trade diversion' school and debates why the WTO should deal with PTAs and if PTAs belong under the mandate of the WTO as we now know it.




Regional Trade Agreements and the Multilateral Trading System


Book Description

This volume contains a collection of studies examining trade-related issues negotiated in regional trade agreements (RTAs) and how RTAs are related to the WTO's rules. While previous work has focused on subsets of RTAs, these studies are based on what is probably the largest dataset used to date, and highlight key issues that have been negotiated in all RTAs notified to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). New rules within RTAs are compared to rules agreed upon by WTO members. The extent of their divergences and the potential implications for parties to RTAs, as well as for WTO members that are not parties to RTAs, are examined. This volume makes an important contribution to the current debate on the role of the WTO in regulating international trade and how WTO rules relate to new rules being developed by RTAs.




Bilateral and Regional Trade Agreements


Book Description

The history of the world trading system and international trade agreements is characterised by shifts between bilateralism, regionalism and multilateralism. Bilateralism has recently returned, having gained momentum following the failed WTO negotiations at the 1999 Seattle Ministerial Conference. The result is that today's international trade rules are now a complex web of instruments and agreements. This volume contains case studies of selected bilateral and regional free trade agreements (FTAs), covering a wide range of countries, regions and key issues such as intellectual property and agriculture. Authored by leading scholars, practitioners and governmental officials, each case study provides a comprehensive review of the negotiating history and result of the selected agreement. Each study can serve as an in-depth examination of a particular FTA, and the group of case studies can be used to compare and contrast the coverage of different FTAs or to examine the FTAs signed by a particular country.




Methodology for Impact Assessment of Free Trade Agreements


Book Description

This publication displays the menu for choice of available methods to evaluate the impact of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). It caters mainly to policy makers from developing countries and aims to equip them with some economic knowledge and techniques that will enable them to conduct their own economic evaluation studies on existing or future FTAs, or to critically re-examine the results of impact assessment studies conducted by others, at the very least.




Trading Blocs


Book Description

Global commerce is rapidly organizing around regional trading blocs in North America, Western Europe, Pacific Asia, and elsewhere--with potentially dangerous consequences for the world trading system. Professor Kerry Chase examines how domestic politics has driven the emergence of these trading blocs, arguing that businesses today are more favorably inclined to global trade liberalization than in the past because recent regional trading arrangements have created opportunities to restructure manufacturing more efficiently. Trading Blocs is the first book to systematically demonstrate the theoretical significance of economies of scale in domestic pressure for trading blocs, and thereby build on a growing research agenda in areas of political economy and domestic politics. "Chase has written a superb book that provides us with an innovative and compelling explanation for the development of trading blocs." --Vinod Aggarwal, Director, Berkeley APEC Study Center, University of California, Berkeley Kerry A. Chase is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Tufts University.