This book provides fresh insights into the theory and policy of regional and multilateral trade from the perspective of developing countries. With the collapse of talks at the WTO Doha round, regionalism has proliferated in the form of Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs). This in turn has raised a number of critical issues in global trade policy debate. Given the implication of RTAs and WTO negotiations on economic development, the book emphasises that it is essential to examine the macro and micro effects of international trade flows on welfare, revenue, poverty and environment, particularly in the light of diversities, heterogeneities and limited financial capacity of developing countries. It discusses various issues of trade, investment, poverty, gender and legal dimensions in the regional and multilateral framework and is a useful guide to formulation of trade and economic policies for the benefit of developing countries. The book will be of primary interest to those in economics, commerce and management, and will be a useful reference for alternative research in this area.

This book is the first in a set of volumes of compilations of Trade Briefs, intended to serve as sources of information and training, and as reference tools for officials, policy makers and other persons responsible for following negotiations on behalf of Commonwealth developing countries. This volume focuses on the various multilateral and regional negotiations and in particular, the Doha Development Round and ACP-EU Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs). The Papers are presented in a manner which allows for flexibility and accessibility of use. The volume is divided into clear sections according to topics making it easier for trade officials, trade negotiators and researchers to find their subject area of interest. Equally, the volume offers a wide enough selection of trade topics, for individuals with little or no expertise in trade negotiations to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of the current state of international negotiations. Book jacket.

How can international trade agreements promote development and how can rules be designed to benefit poor countries? Can multilateral trade cooperation in the World Trade Organization (WTO) help developing countries create and strengthen institutions and regulatory regimes that will enhance the gains from trade and integration into the global economy? And should this even be done? These are questions that confront policy makers and citizens in both rich and poor countries, and they are the subject of Economic Development and Multilateral Trade Cooperation. This book analyzes how the trading system could be made more supportive of economic development, without eroding the core WTO functions.

Regionalism became a major issue in international commercial diplomacy during the 1990s. The European Union's 1992 program, the formation of NAFTA, and attempts to form or strengthen regional trading arrangements in South America, southern Africa, and Southeast Asia were all viewed as challenges to the nondiscrimination principle that had been the cornerstone of the postwar international trading system. This book provides a unified analysis of policies which discriminate among trading partners, featuring ample treatments of both history and theory as well as a review of empirical studies.

November 1996 Do the forces that regional integration arrangements set up encourage or discourage a trend toward globally freer trade? We don't know yet. The literature on regionalism versus multilateralism is growing as economists and political scientists grapple with the question of whether regional integration arrangements are good or bad for the multilateral system. Are regional integration arrangements building blocks or stumbling blocks, in Jagdish Bhagwati's phrase, or stepping stones toward multilateralism? As economists worry about the ability of the World Trade Organization to maintain the GATT's unsteady yet distinct momentum toward liberalism, and as they contemplate the emergence of world-scale regional integration arrangements (the EU, NAFTA, FTAA, APEC, and, possibly, TAFTA), the question has never been more pressing. Winters switches the focus from the immediate consequences of regionalism for the economic welfare of the integrating partners to the question of whether it sets up forces that encourage or discourage evolution toward globally freer trade. The answer is, We don't know yet. One can build models that suggest either conclusion, but these models are still so abstract that they should be viewed as parables rather than sources of testable predictions. Winters offers conclusions about research strategy as well as about the world we live in. Among the conclusions he reaches: * Since we value multilateralism, we had better work out what it means and, if it means different things to different people, make sure to identify the sense in which we are using the term. * Sector-specific lobbies are a danger if regionalism is permitted because they tend to stop blocs from moving all the way to global free trade. In the presence of lobbies, trade diversion is good politics even if it is bad economics. * Regionalism's direct effect on multilateralism is important, but possibly more so is the indirect effect it has by changing the ways in which groups of countries interact and respond to shocks in the world economy. * Regionalism, by allowing stronger internalization of the gains from trade liberalization, seems likely to facilitate freer trade when it is initially highly restricted. * The possibility of regionalism probably increases the risks of catastrophe in the trading system. The insurance incentives for joining regional arrangements and the existence of shiftable externalities both lead to such a conclusion. So too does the view that regionalism is a means to bring trade partners to the multilateral negotiating table because it is essentially coercive. Using regionalism for this purpose may have been an effective strategy, but it is also risky. This paper - a product of the International Trade Division, International Economics Department - was prepared for a conference on regional integration sponsored by the Centre for Economic Policy Research, La Coru-a, Spain, April 26-27, 1996, and will appear in the conference proceedings.

Progress in multilateral negotiations to liberalize trade under the World Trade Organization (WTO) has become more difficult since newer members are generally developing countries with different interests than the United States, the European Union and other industrialized countries. More than 250 free trade agreements (FTAs) have come into effect since 1948. Partly as a result of the WTO impasse, over 130 FTAs have been ratified just in the past ten years; each agreement has been designed to eliminate trade restrictions and subsidies between the parties involved. Almost all of the WTO Members participate in one or more FTAs (some Members are party to twenty or more). Most books on FTAs are country- or region-specific, while others deal with the subject from a particular perspective. This timely work, produced by some of the world's leading experts in their respective fields, employs a broader approach exploring FTAs from the interdisciplinary perspectives of international law, political economy, culture and human rights

This book provides a historical perspective of the Uruguay Round agreement and focuses on the interaction between the developed and developing countries on matters relating to the global trading system and its disciplines since the founding of General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

In the last decade, regionalism appears to have emerged as a major new force in the world. This book puts it in its historical context. Regions have emerged before; few are old because they either evolve into federal systems or break up. The current regions imply more integration than a simple view that they are about liberalising trade.

Abstract: "Regional agreements on standards have been largely ignored by economists and unconditionally blessed by multilateral trade rules. Chen and Mattoo find, theoretically and empirically, that such agreements increase trade between participating countries but not necessarily with the rest of the world. Adopting a common standard in a Region--that is, harmonization--boosts exports of excluded industrial countries to the region. But it reduces exports of excluded developing countries, possibly because developing country firms are hurt more by an increase in the stringency of standards and benefit less from economies of scale in integrated markets. Mutual recognition agreements are more uniformly trade promoting unless they contain restrictive rules of origin, in which case intra-regional trade increases at the expense of trade with other, especially developing, countries. The authors propose a modification of international trade rules to strike a better balance between the interests of integrating and excluded countries. This paper--a product of the Trade Team, Development Research Group--is part of a larger effort in the group to understand the implications for trade of agreements on standards"--World Bank web site.