Competition provisions in regional trade agreements : how to assure development gains (original) (raw)
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Competition provisions in regional trade agreements
Regional Rules in the Global Trading System, 2001
Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) have grown dramatically in number and importance since the early 1990s and they increasingly include chapters and provisions encompassing competition issues. This study provides a taxonomy of the types of competition-related provisions contained in selected RTAs. It distinguishes different types of provisions addressing cooperation and coordination among competition agencies, as well as provisions directly addressing anticompetitive behaviour. It further contains information on dispute settlement, provisions concerning special and differential treatment and competition-specific clauses regarding non-discrimination, transparency, due-process, trade remedies and the exlusion of antidumping. The study also assesses the role and scope of competition provisions and distinguishes two families of agreements: those containing substantive provisions addressing anticompetitive behaviour and those focusing more on coordination and cooperation .
Policy Research Working Papers, 2010
The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.
Regional Trade Agreements: A Strive to Political integration and common market
This article intends to look at the regional trade agreements (RTAs) that develops protectionist measure to discriminate against certain parts of the world trade and create transaction costs because the need for customs officials to analyze the ‘origin’ of goods. Notwithstanding, regional trade agreements are also politically and economically risky because preferential treatment is becoming merely a reward for governments pursuing non trade related objectives. Let us keep in mind that regional trade agreements naturally die especially when countries formerly had bilateral trade agreements enter into plurilateral. For instance, on May 01, 2004 fully 65 RTAs become defunct as 10 new members joined the EU (Viet .D. Do & William Watson, p-8). More RTAs have life on paper then in reality .However, free trade arrangement, are diplomatically useful and have minimal real consequences. The question then is why do members of RTAs become member of multilateral trade agreements? In Africa, intra-trade is not as common from the 1980 to 2000 the share of internal trade in ECOWAS and Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) grew approximately fourfold, from 2.5 to 11 per cent (Lerand Bartels & Federino Ortino, Economic Analysis & regional trade Agreements, P-13). Crawford & Laird concluded in 2001,’ the overall numbers do not point to clear evidence of diversion alone from imports from non-numbers of RTAs’. In ECOWAS adopted the West Africa Common Industrial Policy to increase intra-regional trade from 12% to about 40% in 2030 (ECOWAS, 2010).
Nonconventional Provisions in Regional Trade Agreements: Do They Enhance International Trade?
Journal of Applied Economics, 2014
The scope of recent regional trade agreements (RTAs) is becoming much wider in terms of including several provisions such as competition policy or intellectual property. This paper empirically examines how far advanced, non-conventional provisions in RTAs increase trade values among RTA member countries, by estimating the gravity equation with more disaggregated indicators for RTAs. As a result, we find that the provision on competition policy has the largest impacts on trade values, following that on government procurement. Our further analysis reveals that the more significant roles of these two provisions can be also observed in the impacts on the intensive and extensive margins. The Institute of Developing Economies (IDE) is a semigovernmental, nonpartisan, nonprofit research institute, founded in 1958. The Institute merged with the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) on July 1, 1998. The Institute conducts basic and comprehensive studies on economic and related affairs in all developing countries and regions, including Asia, the
Regional Trade Agreements The Mainstream Approach and an Alternative Treatment
2000
This paper analyses the mainstream approach to regional trade agreements (RTAs) and presents an alternative treatment. Mainstream theory maintains that the principle of comparative advantage is the fundamental explanation for the gains from trade argument or the assertion that 'free trade is best.' RTAs are not an exception. They constitute a special case of application of comparative advantage. However, comparative
2011
This paper seeks to provide a brief presentation of safeguard measures in regional trade agreements (RTAs) and how these relate to developing countries. The purpose is also to examine whether regional safeguard measures are different from global safeguard measures and if the possible differences entail any conflict of norms. In order to answer that question, some RTAs have been investigated and compared, with a special emphasis on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs). The methods for this study are the traditional legal method, i.e. examining the relevant law and making legal arguments and the comparative method where different aspects of the law are examined. The respective regulations of safeguard measures in various RTAs are examined in relation to each other as well as to global regulation, i.e. WTO law.