Synopses & Reviews
The creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995 ushered in a new era in world trading arrangements. Building on the General Agreement on Trades and Tariffs (GATT), the intergovernmental treaty that for 50 years had regulated international trade relations, the WTO is a global organization of equal standing to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and will set the agenda for international trade for decades to come. The authors of this volume were heavily involved in the Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations that laid the foundations for the creation of the WTO, and were ideally placed to see how the politics of negotiation affects the economics of trade.
The Political Economy of the World Trading System is the first comprehensive and accessible introduction to the institutional mechanics, economics, and politics of the global trading networks. It goes beyond description of the rules of the WTO to analyse the political and economic forces that sculpted them, the incentives for countries to abide by them, and the likely future direction of the organization. The authors show how governments are not necessarily the social welfare-maximizing entities often found in textbooks, but instead develop policy subject to the pressures of a variety of interest groups. Although economic theory suggests that countries should pursue liberal trade policies and exchange goods and services on the basis of their comparative advantage, in practice most nations actively intervene in international trade. The political economy approach taken in this volume explains how the WTO functions, why GATT has been very successful in reducing tariffs, and why it has proven much more difficult to expand the reach of multilateral disciplines to domestic policies impacting on trade.
This book will increase the reader's understanding of international economics, business, and international relations by supplying in-depth insider knowledge of how trade negotiations take place, how this decision-making affects trade policy, and how the multilateral arrangements that shape world trade are created. This information is crucial to understand why WTO rules are phrased as they are, and to understand the processes by which business organizations, industrial associations, and political lobbies influence the multilateral trading system. In this expanded and thoroughly revised edition, the authors have taken account of the recent developments in international trade relations, included an extra chapter on the historical importance of international trading arrangements, and updated all the references and guides to further reading.
Synopsis
This new edition incorporates all the recent developments in world trading arrangements, and includes a new chapter on the historical importance of international trade.
Synopsis
The World Trade Organization is likely to be a major international organization for the foreseeable future. This volume, the first full-length study of the WTO and GATT from the viewpoint of public choice and political economy, details the mechanics of the multilateral trading system that emerged from the Uruguay Round of GATT. The authors, who were involved in the negotiations of the Uruguay Round, explain why WTO rules are phrased the way they are, the successes and failures of WTO and GATT, and how business, industrial associations and political lobbies influence the multilateral trading system.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. [507]-540) and index.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Part I. The Global Trading System
1. The Trading System in Perspective
Part II. The Institution
2. The World Trade Organization
3. Dispute Settlement and Enforcement of Rules
4. Negotiating Forum
Part III. The Multilateral Trade Agreements
5. Trade in Goods
6. Sector-Specific Multilateral Trade Agreements
7. Trade in Services
8. Intellectual Property Rights
Part IV. Holes and Loopholes
9. Safeguards
10. Regional Integration
11. Plurilateral Agreements
Part V. Improving the Trading System
12. Developing Countries and Economies in Transition
13. Beyond the Border: Domestic Regulation and National Preferences
14. Domestic Stakeholders, Transparency and Legitimacy
15. Governance, Ownership, Coherence and the Global Public Good