One of the most enduring points of confl ict in the global political economy is whether international economic rules and regulations should accommodate diversity or encourage harmonization of regulatory institutions. The logic of diff erentiation is that optimal regulatory design diff ers according to national needs and conditions. The logic of harmonization, in contrast, is that the transactio...

The onslaught on the World's wildlife continues despite numerous initiatives aimed at curbing it. We build a model that integrates rhino horn trade with rhino population dynamics in order to evaluate the impact of various management policies on rhino sustainability. In our model, an agent-based sub-model of horn trade from the poaching event up through a purchase of rhino horn in Asia impacts r...

â â â  â â â â â â â â â â â  financial sector is one of the most influential sectors in economic activities. empirical and theoretical studies conducted in recent years have also confirmed the significant role of financial institutions in economic growth. additionally, trade and financial liberalization policies have been particular concerned with strategic policies in developed and developing...

one of the unique characteristic of agricultural agreement is to order the countries to accept the commitments in three different areas such as domestic support, market access and export subsidy. although the main goal of this type of classification is the reduction of distortion interventions of trade, but indicates that the agricultural agreement has special attention to political tools again...

Do neoliberal economic policies help or hinder human development? Many have argued that such policies promote economic stability and growth, which may have indirect positive effects on human welfare. Others claim that neoliberal policies retard human development. We argue that neoliberal economic policies may improve the human welfare in ways that are independent of their effects on economic pe...

The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) demonstrates the international political will invested in combating the tobacco pandemic and a newfound prominence for tobacco control within the global health agenda. However, major difficulties exist in managing conflicts with foreign and trade policy priorities, and significant obstacles confront efforts to create synergies with developm...

As from 2001, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) has embarked on a course to deepen regional integration through restructuring. Under the new structure SADC has centralised the coordination of its activities to the Secretariat in Gaborone. The former Sector Coordinating Units have been merged into four directorates, one of which is the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources (FAN...

The demand for marine transportation and its associated CO2 emissions are growing rapidly as a result of increasing international trade and economic growth. An activity-based approach is developed for forecasting CO2 emissions from the China-oriented international seaborne trade sector. To accurately estimate the aggregated emissions, CO2 emissions are calculated individually for five categorie...

This paper deals with the quantification of GMO regulations on bilateral trade flows. A composite index of the ‘complexity’ of such regulations for sixty countries as well as an ‘objective’ score for six GMO regulatory sub-dimensions has been developed. Using a gravity model, we show how bilateral ‘similarity’ in GMO regulations, affect trade flows for the composite index and its components. Re...

In the recent years, there has been an increasing amount of interest in trade policy for so called "results-oriented" trade policies (REO). This term refers to situations in which a country's trade policy focuses on quantitative market outcomes rather than on rules by which international transactions are conducted. Typically, a "results-oriented" trade policy involves a government specifying to...