A propos de l’OMC

This is a revision and update of "Intellectual Property Provisions in Regional Trade Agreements" by Valdés and Runyowa (2012). This paper adjusts the methodology applied to assess the intellectual property (IP) provisions contained in regional trade agreements (RTAs) and the aggregation of such provisions into groups; it also updates the RTAs surveyed, from 194 in November 2010 to 245 in February 2014. New information contained in this revision relates to three IP-related investment and non-violation provisions in RTAs. The methodological revisions and new information result in changes to the assessment of the IP content of certain RTAs while the update reveals a growing and increasingly complex network of RTAs with IP content. This revision also provides new insights into possible improvements to the methodological toolkit for analysing IP in RTAs. The paper assembles detailed information about the IP provisions contained in active RTAs notified to the WTO. The goal was to expand beyond the more commonly studied RTAs, to review the full array of agreements notified to the WTO and thus to enable consideration of the implications of this diverse range of norm-setting activity for the multilateral system. Mapping of the IP content in RTAs involving parties from all regions and levels of development is necessary to better understand crosscutting trends in RTAs, and how all the parts of the international IP framework influence each other. The methodology followed involved surveying each RTA in the sample to determine whether it made reference to any of 32 different IP-related provisions. Two of the three IP-related provisions new to this revision and update are investment-related IP provisions, while the other concerns dispute settlement for non-violation claims. The relevant provisions are discussed in detail and summary statistics used to identify patterns over time and by continent, level of economic development and selected traders. The number of IP provisions in each RTA is then used to classify agreements according to their level of IP content. The first significant identified trend is the acceleration in the conclusion of RTAs with IP provisions after the creation of the WTO and the entry into force of the WTO TRIPS Agreement. A significant proportion of those RTAs contain some type of IP provision, but the number and type of those provisions vary widely across agreements. A majority of the RTAs surveyed include general IP provisions, while a smaller proportion contains explicit provisions on specific fields of IP law, such as geographical indications, patents, trademarks and copyright. The inclusion of even more detailed provisions elaborating on specific areas of IP law is less common. As a result, the actual IP content of RTAs differs greatly across the sample, with slightly less than half of these agreements found to havesubstantive IP standards that can be classified as moderate or high. The RTAs containing a high level of IP provisions are characterized by a hub-and-spoke architecture in which the wording and structure of IP provisions converged around the RTAs of specific countries or blocs. The largest systems are grouped around the EFTA, the European Union and the United States. The hub-and-spoke architecture seems to have encouraged the convergence of domestic IP regimes among the respective RTA signatories. The mechanics of this potentially crucial process and its economic implications require further investigation.

Trade has been recognized in the 2030 development Agenda as well as in the Addis Ababa Agenda for Action as an important means for the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

In this paper, the two way relationship between deep integration and production networks trade is investigated. Deep integration is captured by a set of indices constructed in terms of policy areas covered in preferential trade agreements. An augmented gravity equation is estimated to investigate the impact of deep integration on production networks. The results show that on average, signing deeper agreements increases production networks trade between member countries by almost 35 percentage points. In addition, the impact of deep integration is higher for trade in automobile parts and information and technology products compared with textiles products. To analyse whether higher levels of network trade increase the likelihood of signing deeper agreements the literature on the determinants of preferential trade agreements is followed. The estimation results show that, after taking into account other PTAs determinants, a ten per cent increase in the share of production network trade over total trade increases the depth of an agreement by approximately 6 percentage points. In addition, the probability of signing deeper agreements is higher for country pairs involved in North-South production sharing and for countries belonging to the Asia region.

In spite of their growing importance in international trade as well as in bilateral and multilateral trade negotiations, services have only attracted limited attention from researchers interested in determinants of trade policies and trade cooperation. This paper seeks to account for countries' varying levels of market access commitments under the multilateral General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). I develop an argument suggesting how levels of democracy and factor endowments are associated with more commitments. The empirical analysis supports these propositions, and also suggests that relative size, as well as regulatory capacity, are positively linked to GATS commitments.

This paper surveys a wide body of economic literature on the relationship between currencies and trade. Two main issues are investigated: the impact on international trade of exchange rate volatility and of currency misalignments. On average, exchange rate volatility has a negative (even if not large) impact on trade flows. The extent of this effect depends on a number of factors, including the existence of hedging instruments, the structure of production, and the degree of economic integration across countries. Exchange rate misalignments are predicted to have short-run effects in models with price rigidities, but the exact impact depends on a number of features, such as the pricing strategy of firms engaging in international trade and the importance of global production networks. This effect is predicted to disappear in the long-run, unless some other distortion characterizes the economy. Empirical results confirm that short-run effects can exist, but their size and persistence over time are not consistent across different studies.

This paper examines the background of Article 66.2 of the TRIPS Agreement, the nature of this obligation on developed country Members that pertains to the promotion of technology transfer to LDC Members and how it is being implemented and how such implementation is being monitored in the TRIPS Council.

This paper quantifies the extent of preferential trade as a share of total world trade in different regions of the world and for two periods. Results show that: i) preferential trade represented 40% of world trade in the period 1988-1992 and it slightly increased to 42% during the period 1993-1997; ii) during the second period, agricultural products generally benefited more from the existence of preferential trade agreements than industrial products (maybe due to GATT-exemption); iii) the regional distribution of preferential trade is relatively uneven with a significant share of preferential trade in Western Europe (around 70 per cent), relatively low values in the Western Hemisphere (around 25 per cent), very low shares in Asia and Oceania (around 4 per cent) and average values in the rest-of-the-world (Eastern Europe and Africa); iv) the largest increase in shares of preferential trade between the two periods has occurred in the Western Hemisphere and in Eastern-Europe and Africa; v) at the country level there is an inverted-u-shape relationship between the share of preferential trade and the size and GDP per capita of individual countries; vi) countries which are highly open to trade tend to have a larger share of preferential trade on total trade in the period 1993-1997, suggesting that preferential and non-preferential trade can be seen as complements.

This paper reviews the main developments of trade and related policies and measures in the Asia and Pacific region during the 30 years since establishment, in 1989, of the Trade Policy Review Mechanism (TPRM). The objectives of the TPRM include facilitating the smooth functioning of the multilateral trading system by enhancing the transparency of WTO Members' trade policies.

Competition agency guidelines, policy statements and related advocacy are an important vehicle for policy expression and the guidance of firms across the full spectrum of anti-competitive practices and market conduct.

Two institutions provide multilateral venues for countries to discuss food safety measures at the international level: the Codex Alimentarius Commission (Codex) and the World Trade Organization. Both institutions encourage their members to base food safety standards on scientific evidence. In this paper we provide a description of how food safety related scientific evidence is generated and how it is used in the context of risk assessment for international standard-setting at CODEX and in WTO trade disputes. In particular, we discuss the processes leading to policy conclusions on the basis of scientific evidence, with a focus on the interactions involved between private and public sector actors and those between “scientific experts” and others. We identify weaknesses in the current institutional set-up and provide suggestions on how to improve the interaction between different players at the national and international level so as to strengthen the existing system and increase its cost efficiency.