National industrial subsidies are a major irritant in international trading relations. There have been many attempts to curb the damaging effects of subsidies on the international trading order; most have met with stiff oppostion and mixed success. Today the combination of industrial subsidies and the countervailing duties intended to combat them p
"The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) extends the multilateral trading system to services. Little is said In the GATS about subsidies, beyond stipulating that subsidies are subject to the existing provisions, including the most-favoured-nation and national-treatment principles, and that Members shall enter into negotiations with a view to developing the disciplines necessary to avoid the trade distorting effects of subsidies." "This timely book provides a comprehensive analysis of services subsidies under the GATS. It begins with a description of services and trade in services, and of the salient characteristics that make regulation of services subsidies more complex than those associated with agricultural and industrial goods. It then analyzes the economic arguments underpinning the need for regulation, as well as the need for governments to retain sufficient latitude to implement non-trade-related policy measures. A description of the information available on services subsidies is followed by a classification of services subsidies according to their distortive effects, and by a detailed analysis of those elements that may form a definition of services subsidies for the purpose of a future regulatory framework." "A key section is devoted to the analysis of those existing provisions of the GATS that may exert a certain measure of discipline on services subsidies, and to the question of the desirability and technical feasibility of countervailing measures. Rules on services subsidies contained in regional trade agreements and the need for special and differential treatment for services subsidies by developing countries are also discussed. Finally, and prior to the conclusion, two sectoral studies deal with the question of subsidies aimed at attracting foreign direct investment and subsidies to the audiovisual sector." "This work represents the first extensive and comprehensive analysis of the issue of services subsidies in the context of the GATS, and includes numerous references to relevant European Union State Aid legislation and jurisprudence." --Book Jacket.
This volume analyzes the import patterns of selected countries to determine which nations are active importers and which ones import much less than expected. The majority of the work focuses on the industrialized countries, which are at the center of the international trading system, determining which are very active importers and which are not. Controls for wealth, size, and membership in customs areas are included. Countries importing at levels below predicted ones are the countries likely to be most effective at protecting domestic industries from foreign competition. For example, the results permit an evaluation of the arguments that Japan has consistently imported less than would be expected due to the presence of barriers protecting the domestic market.
The increasing importance attached to the economic and social cohesion of the European Union since the 1980s, and the role of competition policy in achieving this objective, has special significance for the control of regional aids, given the general ban on State aid. Regional aids are considered to have the potential to contribute to economic and social cohesion and to undermine its attainment. The notion of competition policy as an instrument of economic and social cohesion has become a standard part of Commission rhetoric in defence of its actions. This book is concerned with the influence of EU competition policy on the regional policies of the Member States. It focuses on how the European Commission has interpreted the derogations from the State aid ban to enable the conduct of regional aid policies. The book takes both a historical perspective, tracing the evolution of policy, and a thematic one, examining in particular the relationship between EU competition and cohesion policies and the treatment of aid to very large projects. The author clearly demonstrates that, in reality, the competition policy control of regional aids is of much longer standing than the community?s explicit regional aid policy and, in many respects, of arguably greater influence. She shows how competition policy has for almost thirty years shaped the design, scope and implementation of national regional aid policies; in no EU country has regional policy been unaffected by Commission intervention in the name of competition policy. Moreover, the policy principles developed for the EU now apply extraterritorially to members of the European Economic Area and to the current applicant countries. The study?s overall perspective is policy-oriented. It considers both the impact of Commission intervention in the past and the implications of policy for the future, especially in the context of enlargement and a wider Europe. It will be an invaluable resource for all policymakers and practitioners active in the fields of economic development, regional policy and State aid law at European, national and subnational levels.
This 2005 compilation of 45 case studies documents disparate experiences among economies in addressing the challenges of participating in the WTO. It demonstrates that success or failure is strongly influenced by how governments and private sector stakeholders organise themselves at home. The contributors, mainly from developing countries, give examples of participation with lessons for others. They show that when the system is accessed and employed effectively, it can serve the interests of poor and rich countries alike. However, a failure to communicate among interested parties at home often contributes to negative outcomes on the international front. Above all, these case studies demonstrate that the WTO creates a framework within which sovereign decision-making can unleash important opportunities or undermine the potential benefits flowing from a rules-based international environment that promotes open trade.
This book brings together a collection of papers that Robert M Stern and his co-authors have written in recent years. The collection addresses a variety of issues pertinent to the global trading system. One group of papers deals with globalization in terms of what the public needs to know about this phenomenon and the role of the World Trade Organization (WTO), whether some countries may be hurt by globalization, how global market integration relates to national sovereignty, and how and whether considerations of fairness are and should be dealt with in the global trading system and WTO negotiations. A second group of papers consists of analytical and computational modeling studies of multilateral, regional, and bilateral trading arrangements and negotiations from a global and national perspective for the United States and other major trading countries. The remaining papers include an empirical analysis of barriers to international services transactions and the consequences of liberalization, and issues of international trade and labor standards.
