Preferential trade agreements (PTAs) have become an increasingly prominent feature of the international trade environment, with salient examples being the widening and deepening of the European Union (EU), the success of the Mercosur, and the formation of the North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA). In fact, a majority of the active agreements notified to gatt through 1995 were signed in ...

Open markets play a pivotal role in supporting growth and job creation, and in achieving our goals under the G-20 Framework for Strong, Sustainable and Balanced Growth. We ask the OECD, the ILO, World Bank, and the WTO to report on the benefits of trade liberalisation for employment and growth at the Seoul Summit. The present document is submitted in fulfilment of that mandate. It is the produc...

Building on Tangcharoensathien and colleagues’ description of four tactics used by the tobacco, alcohol, processed food, and breast milk substitute industries to interfere with the development and implementation of health policies, we present a fifth tactic: trade and investment disputes. We describe recent examples of trade and investment claims filed by the tobacco in...

Open markets play a pivotal role in supporting growth and job creation, and in achieving our goals under the G-20 Framework for Strong, Sustainable and Balanced Growth. We ask the OECD, the ILO, World Bank, and the WTO to report on the benefits of trade liberalisation for employment and growth at the Seoul Summit. The present document is submitted in fulfilment of that mandate. It is the produc...

Open markets play a pivotal role in supporting growth and job creation, and in achieving our goals under the G-20 Framework for Strong, Sustainable and Balanced Growth. We ask the OECD, the ILO, World Bank, and the WTO to report on the benefits of trade liberalisation for employment and growth at the Seoul Summit. The present document is submitted in fulfilment of that mandate. It is the produc...

The relationship between technology and international competitiveness dates back to the neo-technological trade theories of the 1960s. This approach considers difference in technology as the primary motive for difference among nations in terms of trade performance. The technology gap approach emphasizes inter-country differences in innovativeness as the basis for international trade flows. The ...

This paper examines the validity of the ̄ve fundamental theorems of international trade and some other issues in a general model of externality. The model allows the possibility of own-sector externality and cross-sector externality. This paper derives conditions under which some of these theorems are valid, and explains what the government may choose to correct the distortionary e®ects of exte...

Participation in international trade potentially brings huge benefits to developing countries. However, the design and setup of the international trade regime, most importantly the rules and regulations stipulated in the agreements of the World Trade Organization (WTO), often make it difficult for developing countries to fully tap this potential. As will be argued in this paper using descriptiv...

Primary objective of this paper is to explain why Korea has been successful in economic growth and industrial transformation while Iran has failed in this area. To explain the different performances of the two countries, we have looked at their initial level of industrialization, nature of political regimes and economic institutions, trade and industrial policies in the two countries. Our c...