Accords commerciaux régionaux
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A Survey of Investment Provisions in Regional Trade Agreements
The liberalization and protection of investment flows has become an increasingly indispensable pillar of economic integration. The objective of this study is to contribute to a better understanding of the ways in which RTAs achieve such liberalization and protection. To this end we have surveyed the investment provisions contained in 260 RTAs notified to the WTO by 31 December -2015- and in force on that date. More than half of these RTAs contain investment chapters though they vary in terms of their substantive scope and coverage. The main categories of investment provisions in RTAs reviewed in the paper include the definitions of investment and investor investment liberalization investment protection and ISDS. Also included in our analysis are provisions supporting the investment framework host state flexibilities investment promotion as well as provisions on sustainable and socially responsible investment.
R&D in the Network of International Trade
Recent empirical evidence has shown that trade liberalization promotes innovation and productivity growth in individual firms. This paper argues that different types of trade liberalization – multilateral versus regional – may lead to different R&D and productivity levels of firms. Trade agreements between countries are modelled with a network: nodes represent countries and a link between the nodes indicates the existence of a trade agreement. In this framework the multilateral trade agreement is represented by the complete network while the overlap of regional trade agreements is represented by the hub-and-spoke trade system. Trade liberalization which increases the network of trade agreements reinforces the incentives for firms to invest in R&D through the creation of new markets (scale effect) but it may also dampen these incentives through the emergence of new competitors (competition effect). The joint action of these two effects within the multilateral and the regional trade systems gives rise to the result that for the same number of direct trade partners the R&D effort of a country in the multilateral agreement is lower than the R&D effort of a hub but higher than the R&D effort of a spoke. This suggests that a ”core” country within the regional trade system has higher R&D and productivity level than a country with the same number of trade agreements within the multilateral system whereas the opposite is true for a ”periphery” country. Additionally the paper finds that while multilateral trade liberalization boosts productivity of all countries regional trade liberalization increases productivity of core economies but may decrease productivity of periphery economies if the level of competition in the new trade partner countries of the periphery economy is ”too high”. Furthermore the aggregate level of R&D activities within the multilateral trade agreement exceeds that in the star – the simplest representative of the hub-and-spoke trade system.
Mapping of Safeguard Provisions in Regional Trade Agreements
This study surveys safeguard provisions on trade in goods in 232 regional trade agreements (RTAs) notified to the GATT/WTO up to 31 December 2012. In particular it identifies those RTAs that modify the conditions applicable to the RTA partner (either substantively or procedurally) in the event that a global safeguard is invoked. In the case of bilateral (or intra-RTA safeguards) the study analyses provisions governing injury assessment causation conditions for the invocation of a measure and the types of measures that may be employed. We use the yardstick of GATT Article XIX and the WTO Safeguards Agreement to determine whether the provisions applicable to bilateral safeguard measures are more or less stringent than the corresponding multilateral rules. The study also includes an inventory of infant industry balance of payments and special safeguards applicable to agricultural products found in RTAs. We demonstrate through various examples that safeguard provisions have become more prescriptive in recent years though little homogeneity in their design is found even for a given country. In the case of global safeguards roughly a quarter of RTAs provide for the possible exclusion of the RTA partner subject to certain criteria thus discriminating against non-parties. In the case of bilateral safeguards some RTAs use looser language to define the trigger mechanism to invoke a safeguard and to determine injury standards thus potentially offering greater scope to use such measures. We found wide variety in the types of bilateral safeguard measures that are permitted in RTAs. A number of more recent RTAs tighten the conditions for application of a bilateral safeguard through limiting the duration of the safeguard measure allowing the use of tariff-based measures only and binding the use of the measure to the transition period. Other RTAs specify neither the length of the bilateral safeguard measure nor the conditions for its reapplication thus providing greater scope to impose such measures than in the multilateral context.
Typology of Environment-Related Provisions in Regional Trade Agreements
The last 25 years have witnessed a rapid increase in regional trade agreements (RTAs). Although RTAs generally aim at lowering tariff and non-tariff trade barriers an increasing number of trade agreements extend their scope to cover specific policy areas such as environmental protection and sustainable development. This paper establishes a comprehensive typology and quantitative analysis of environment-related provisions included in RTAs. The analysis covers all the RTAs currently into force that have been notified to the WTO between 1957 and May 2016 namely 270 trade agreements. While environmental exceptions along with environmental cooperation continue to be the most common types of environment-related provisions many other different types of provisions are incorporated in an increasing number of RTAs. The common feature of all environment-related provisions including environmental exceptions is their heterogeneity in terms of structure language and scope.
Competition policy, trade and the global economy: Existing WTO elements, commitments in regional trade agreements, current challenges and issues for reflection
Competition policy today is an essential element of the legal and institutional framework for the global economy. Whereas decades ago anti-competitive practices tended to be viewed mainly as a domestic phenomenon most facets of competition law enforcement now have an important international dimension. Examples include: the investigation and prosecution of price fixing and market sharing arrangements that often spill across national borders and in important instances encircle the globe; multiple recent prominent cases of abuses of a dominant position in high-tech network industries; important current cases involving transnational energy markets; and major corporate mergers that often need to be simultaneously reviewed by multiple jurisdictions.
Intellectual Property Provisions in Regional Trade Agreements
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.
Mapping of Dispute Settlement Mechanisms in Regional Trade Agreements
Regional trade agreements (RTAs) have become an indelible feature of the international trading landscape. Most if not all RTAs contain provisions that establish procedures for resolving disputes among their signatory members. Yet the design and functioning of these dispute settlement mechanisms (DSMs) and more specifically how they differ from the WTO dispute settlement system remain relatively unexplored. Existing academic literature has primarily focused on the narrow issue of jurisdictional conflict between DSMs of RTAs and the WTO dispute settlement system. Literature mapping out and classifying systematically the DSMs of RTAs is more limited. This research paper goes beyond considering the issue of jurisdictional conflict between the multilateral and "regional" regimes. We map out the DSMs in RTAs that have been notified to the WTO and were in force at the end of 2012 and consider a typology of these DSMs based on their nature and design. We also use the data obtained from our mapping exercise in two ways. First we identify trends and patterns of use either regionally or by individual countries of the different types of DSMs in RTAs. Trends are analysed in relation to five key factors: (i) evolution over time (ii) level of economic development (iii) regional characteristics (iv) level of integration (partial scope agreement free trade agreement or customs union) and (v) configuration (bilateral or plurilateral). Second we undertake a "nuts and bolts" analysis of the DSMs of RTAs by examining their approach to various issues in international dispute settlement. Our aim is to draw conclusions about the extent to which the predominant type of DSM in RTAs has features that are different from those of the WTO dispute settlement system.